The Survival Curve
A fifth of the sellers who eventually sold were under contract within two weeks of listing. The pace then slows sharply: the share does not reach 43 percent until week eight, and it crosses half only at week twelve. The back half of the curve is long and expensive, with one closing in five taking more than twenty-six weeks to go under contract. The shape matters more than any single number on it. A large minority of homes sell almost immediately. The rest wait much longer and give up more of the price.
Roughly one seller in ten waited past week thirty-nine, and one in twenty was still unsold at the one-year mark yet eventually closed. Those campaigns ended in a sale, but a seller entering this market should know the distribution has a long right side. Nothing about a healthy luxury market guarantees any individual home the median timeline.
Source: BeachesMLS, 1,204 closed residential sales at $3M+, August 2025 through July 2026
Source: BeachesMLS, closed residential sales at $3M+, trailing twelve months
What Price Does to the Timeline
Price is the strongest influence on the timeline. Homes between $3 million and $5 million sell on a 62-day median, with 61 percent under contract by week twelve. Above twenty million, 43 percent were under contract by the same week, and the slowest tenth of that group waited more than a year. The cause is simple: each step up in price shrinks the pool of possible buyers, and our speed of sale study found the same ordering inside individual communities. A realistic timeline starts with the home's price range rather than the county average.
The dividing line sits at five million dollars. Below it, a clear majority of eventual sellers have a buyer by week twelve. Above it, fewer than half do in every price range, and the difference between ten million and twenty-five million is smaller than the difference between four million and eight. Once a home is priced above the deep $3 million to $5 million pool, the county averages say little about how long the sale will take.
Source: BeachesMLS, closed residential sales at $3M+, trailing twelve months
The Fastest Sales
About 16 percent of the year's closings recorded seven days or fewer on market. At this price level a sale that fast usually means the deal was arranged before the listing appeared. Think off-market conversations, listings entered as already pending, and buyers the agent had already found. A seller planning a conventional campaign should set this group aside. Without it, the median for the rest of the market runs longer than the headline 72 days. That is one reason the county figure understates a typical campaign.
What Waiting Costs
Time on the market has a measurable cost. Grouped by campaign length, the year's closings show a steady decline. Sales agreed within the first four weeks closed at a median 95.6 percent of the original asking price. Campaigns that ran past twenty-six weeks closed at 83.6 percent, a gap of roughly 12 points. The loss builds in two steps, since long campaigns reduce the asking price along the way and then accept a further discount in the final negotiation. Our pricing cushion analysis found that the pattern almost always starts with the original asking price, set on day one. The data cannot prove that every slow sale was overpriced. It does show that longer campaigns consistently closed at lower shares of the original asking price.
Source: BeachesMLS, closed residential sales at $3M+, trailing twelve months
How to Use These Numbers
One caveat comes first: this study measures homes that sold. Listings that expired or were withdrawn without closing never enter closed-sale data, and our expired listings autopsy found that group is large and its outcomes are worse. The odds for a freshly signed listing are therefore somewhat lower than every number here. That gap is the reason to treat week twelve as a working decision point. Half of the eventual sellers have found their buyer by then, and the typical sale has already slipped to a lower share of the asking price. The data suggests a reassessment at month three is worth several times one made at month six. Sellers preparing a campaign can start with our selling process. Buyers can read the same curve from the other side, through our buyer services, since a listing's week number says a great deal about the negotiation ahead.
Bottom Line
Half of the county's eventual luxury sellers find their buyer by week twelve, and a fifth find one almost immediately. The rest close at a widening discount that reaches about 12 points of the original asking price past the six-month mark. The three-month point that sellers fear is the most informative moment in the campaign, and sellers who act at that point keep more of the price than sellers who wait.
For sellers approaching week twelve: If the showings have happened and the offers have not arrived, the price is the most likely problem. The discount for waiting grows by the quarter, and a reduction made now is historically about half the size of the one made at month six.
This study covers every residential closing at $3,000,000 or above recorded in Palm Beach County from August 1, 2025 through July 31, 2026. That is 1,204 sales after deduplication by listing id. The count filters to Palm Beach County municipalities, since the regional feed also carries Broward and Miami-Dade records. Days on market are as recorded in the multiple listing service (MLS) and measure list date to contract date. Survival percentages are computed on eventual sellers only. Expired and withdrawn listings never appear in closed-sale data, so true survival odds from the day of listing are lower than the figures shown. Medians are used throughout.
Sale-to-list ratios compare the recorded sale price with both the original and the final list price. The patience tax is the gap between two groups' median sale price as a share of the original list price. One group agreed terms in the first four weeks, the other at week twenty-seven or later.
All data sourced from BeachesMLS via the Spark API, pulled August 2026.
