Luxury Home Won't Sell? Raise the Price

When mere mortals put their home on the market and it doesn't sell, they lower the price. When the uber-rich struggle to unload, they do the opposite and jack the price. The Wall Street Journal reports on the seemingly counter-intuitive trend in the luxury-home market: More and more homes listed above $1 million are seeing their asking price go up the longer they sit.

Does it work? The answer seems to be often enough, especially as overseas hunters of American trophy homes—like this and this—keep entering the market. It also helps that "pricing homes at the extreme high end of the market is a somewhat subjective, and often irrational, process," writes Candace Jackson. That explains why the owner of Jennifer Lopez's former home in Miami Beach put it on the market for $29 million in 2010 and recently relisted it for $40 million. (More real estate stories.)