64 DAYS BEFORE | UNDER CONTRACT IN 7 DAYS | 0 DAYS ON MARKET | SOLD ABOVE ASKING
After 64 days with another agent, two price cuts, and no offers, this Ballantyne home in Charlotte, NC relisted with The Finigan Group and was under contract above asking seven days after the paperwork was signed, before it ever went live. The plan was a fresh look at the price, a Coming Soon campaign that found the buyer early, and a negotiation that turned a sight unseen offer into a firm contract at a higher number.
Steven and Jill had been in their Ballantyne home since 2011. They loved where it sat, the neighborhood around it, and the life the house made easy. It was the kind of home you do not plan on leaving.
Then life changed for their family, and the house had to be sold. Not eventually. Soon, and for as much as the market would bear, because the equity in that house was the next chapter.
That is a hard combination. Speed and price usually pull against each other, and the first attempt had delivered neither.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Hero exterior or best interior shot. No video link was provided for this story. Alt text: Exterior of a home in the Ballantyne area of Charlotte NC]
Why didn’t the home sell the first time?
They listed with another agent in the spring at $575,000 and spent 64 days on the market. The showings came, several a week at first, and then nothing. The price was cut once, then again, down to $559,000. The second cut changed nothing. In the final two weeks there was not a single showing, and there was never an offer. For a family that needed to move, that is the worst version of a listing: all the disruption of keeping a house show-ready, with none of the result.
It was not the house. Before the first listing they had repainted the upstairs and put in new carpet. After it came off the market they kept going: new floors through the downstairs, fresh trim and paint, a new furnace. Steven and Jill were discouraged, but they were not sitting still.
Plenty of showings and no offers usually means buyers liked the home enough to look and not quite enough to act. When buyers have options, the gap between those two is almost always price and positioning, not the house itself.
This time they were careful. Steven and Jill asked around, ran their own research, and came away with three names. Ours came up more than once. They interviewed the others first, and they chose The Finigan Group for the advice we gave in that first meeting at the house, the marketing plan behind it, and the homes we had already sold in their part of town. It did not need another listing. It needed a different plan.
64 days with another agent.
Zero offers.
Sold above asking
before it ever hit the market.
What we did
We looked at the price honestly. We walked through the market analysis, current conditions, and the most recent comparable sales. The home had been cut twice and still had not moved, which told us the previous cuts had been chasing the market rather than meeting it. Together we agreed that $550,000 was the number that would bring buyers to the table and still protect their equity. A small, deliberate step, not another markdown.
We started the Coming Soon campaign the day the listing was signed. Contractors were still finishing the downstairs, and the photo and video shoot was on the calendar for the following week. We did not wait for either. Buyers and agents were hearing about the home while the last of the trim went in. The point of a Coming Soon campaign is to have demand waiting before the first showing. Here, it did more than that.
We found the buyer before launch. Five days after the listing was signed, on a Sunday night, an offer arrived from a buyer who wanted the home enough to write it without walking through. Sight unseen, at full asking price.
We negotiated it up, then to a firm contract. Full price was a good start, not the finish. Josh went back to the buyer’s agent with two things: the work Steven and Jill had just put into the home, and the activity the campaign had already produced before a single showing. The buyers came up to $553,500. The contract was ratified that Tuesday, seven days after the listing was signed and before the home was ever listed as active.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Front exterior of the home. Alt text: Front exterior of a home in the Ballantyne area of Charlotte NC]
What Steven and Jill did.
The decision to try again was theirs, and after 64 days of showings it was not an easy one. They took the time to interview agents instead of signing with the first one who called.
The work was theirs. New floors, trim, paint, a furnace, and the upstairs refresh before any of it. When Josh told the buyer’s agent the home had been thoroughly refreshed, that was not a sales line. It was a list.
The price was a joint decision. They had been at $559,000, and they agreed to $550,000 because the analysis supported it, not because anyone pushed them there. The final sale, at $553,500, came in above that number.
And they kept prepping. Even as the Coming Soon campaign was producing a buyer, they were getting the home ready for photography and video, because none of us knew yet that the open market would not be needed.
[GALLERY PLACEHOLDER: Six to eight photos of the home, interior and exterior, if a shoot was completed. Alt text: one factual line per image]
How the market responded
Normally this is where the showing count goes. This time there is not one. The home had zero showings on the open market because it never reached the open market.
One buyer, found through the Coming Soon campaign, wrote one offer at the $550,000 list price. We negotiated it to $553,500 and the home was under contract before launch day.
From there it ran the way a well-built contract should. The appraisal came back at value. The inspection produced a short list, Steven and Jill’s contractor handled it, and when Jill emailed to ask whether she was being a pest for checking in, the answer was that this is exactly what we are here for. The sale closed on August 31, the date set in the contract.
After 64 days of showings that led nowhere, Steven and Jill had a sold home in a week, at more than they were asking, with none of the weekends lost to open houses.
They got what the move required: a fast sale, a strong price, and the freedom to move on to the next chapter.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Aerial or street-level shot of the home and neighborhood. Alt text: Aerial view of a home in the Ballantyne area of Charlotte NC]
[CLIENT QUOTE PENDING. No review was provided in the intake. Paste their review here, verbatim and unedited.]
-Steven and Jill R., Ballantyne
this wasn’t luck, it was a plan.
We do this often enough that it no longer surprises us, and we do not say that to brag. We say it because almost nothing that happened here was an accident.
The buyer existed before the home went live because the Coming Soon campaign started the day the paperwork was signed, not the day the photos were ready. The offer came in at asking because the price was set where buyers could see the value, and it went above asking because the negotiation had something real to point to. The contract held because it was built carefully rather than accepted quickly. Those are decisions, and we make them the same way every time. Our listings go under contract in a median of 22 days, per Canopy MLS.
Here is the more useful question, though. That was the right plan for Steven and Jill. Is it the right plan for you?
Probably not, at least not exactly. Theirs hinged on a home that had already been through two months of showings and two price cuts with nothing to show for them, and a family that needed to move quickly. Yours might hinge on a school calendar, a job start date, a rate lock, or a parent who needs you closer. We have run all of those, and none of them look like this one.
If your home had showings and no offers, the buyers were telling you something. Usually it is about price and positioning, not the house. So the first conversation is not about listing. It is about what your move actually has to do, and in what order, before anything goes on the market.
Let us help you make moving easier.
Start with the number.
What your home would bring today, what that leaves you after the mortgage, and what it puts you in range of next. If you're only buying, we can start there instead. No obligation either way.
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Treat it as feedback. Showings mean the marketing reached buyers and the photos were good enough to get them in the door. No offers means the price or the positioning did not convince them once they were inside. Steven and Jill’s home had 64 days of showings and two price cuts with another agent and no offers. A fresh pricing conversation and a Coming Soon campaign produced a full-price offer before the home ever went live, and negotiation took it above asking.
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Yes. A Coming Soon campaign puts the home in front of buyers and agents before it is active on the MLS. Sometimes that builds a line for the first weekend of showings. Sometimes, as it did here, it produces a buyer who makes an offer before the first showing happens. Either way, the point is that demand exists before launch day instead of being built from zero.
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Not automatically. The right move is to look at the market analysis, current conditions, and the most recent comparable sales, and then decide together. In this case the home had already been cut twice, from $575,000 to $559,000, without result. It relisted at $550,000, a small adjustment the data supported, and sold for $553,500. A price cut for its own sake tells buyers the home is in trouble. A price set on evidence tells them it is worth acting on.
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Yes, once your listing agreement has ended. Read the end of your current agreement first, because some include a short protection period covering buyers who were introduced to the home while it was listed. Your new agent can walk through that with you before you sign anything.
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It can be, if it is accepted without care. A buyer who has not walked through the home still has inspection, appraisal, and due diligence ahead of them, so the offer is only as strong as its terms. The work is in negotiating a contract that holds. Steven and Jill’s sight unseen offer was negotiated up and to firm terms before it was accepted, the home appraised, the inspection items were handled, and the sale closed on the date in the contract.
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They asked around after the first listing expired and did their own research, including an AI search for Charlotte listing agents, and came away with three names. The Finigan Group came up more than once. They interviewed the others first and chose us after a meeting at the house. That is the order we recommend to anyone: interview more than one agent, and ask each of them what they would do differently.
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201 transactions between November 2023 and August 2026, totaling $115.6 million in closed volume, per Canopy MLS. Josh Finigan has closed 484 transactions totaling $208.1 million over his career. Those two figures overlap and should not be added together.
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98.24% of list price across 201 transactions, against a Canopy MLS market average of 96.29% over the same period. On a $500,000 home that difference is roughly $10,000. Nearly 42% of listings sold at or above the asking price.
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The median is 22 days on market. More than half, 56.7%, go under contract within 30 days, and a third within 10 days. The average of 38.6 days runs higher because a small number of properties take much longer, which is why the median is the more useful number when you are trying to plan a move.
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37 cities and towns across the greater Charlotte region, including Charlotte, Fort Mill, Concord, Mooresville, Huntersville, Waxhaw, Mint Hill, Indian Trail, and Clover, on both sides of the North Carolina and South Carolina line. The average sale price is $575,120 and the median is $500,000, though the range runs from starter homes to properties above $2 million.
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It happens. A buyer can walk away during due diligence for any reason at all, and no agent can prevent that. What we can do is put the home back on the market quickly, be straightforward with the next buyer about what came up, and keep the closing timeline intact. Plan for the possibility and it becomes a delay instead of a crisis.
