I pulled the sold data on seven properties over $3M in my metro for the last 18 months and the average days on market was 214

214 is roughly right for a thin market, and seven sales is thin but not meaningless. The bigger issue is that DOM at that price point gets gamed constantly, listings get pulled and relisted to reset the clock, so the real number is often worse than what you see in MLS data.

The renovation versus pricing question is almost impossible to untangle from seven comps. In my experience watching deals around $1.5M to $2M, the ones that moved fast were priced fast, not necessarily the prettiest.

Your four out of seven reduction rate is actually the more interesting number to me. That is a seller psychology problem as much as a market problem at that price.

The renovated one probably just had a tighter spread between list and sale, which you can verify in about ten minutes by pulling original list price as a percentage of final sale for all seven.

The thing that bites people in that bracket is carrying cost psychology. Sellers at 3M plus often have the liquidity to sit, so they do, and that patience artificially inflates DOM without ever forcing a real price discovery moment. I have seen notes on properties that sat 300 plus days before the owner finally moved, and the eventual haircut was almost always larger than if they had cut in month two.

Your sample is fine for a sanity check but seven deals over 18 months tells you more about your specific metro than about luxury markets in general. I've seen passive positions in Dallas deals above $3M where the GP was quoting us 180-220 days as the underwriting assumption before we even closed on the acquisition.

The price reduction thing is the more interesting number to me. Four out of seven reducing means sellers are still anchoring to 2021-2022 comps and brokers aren't pushing back hard enough at listing time.

Seven is thin but the renovation vs pricing question is the one I'd chase first.

In my metro the $3M+ stuff that actually closed was sitting closer to 290 days before any cut.

Seven properties is not nothing but it is not enough to separate the renovation variable from the pricing variable, and that distinction matters a lot if you ever move up market. I had a note that went sideways on a $2.8M single family in Scottsdale around 2021, borrower sat on the listing 190 days, took two cuts totaling $380k, and the eventual buyer still negotiated another $95k off the final ask. The property had been updated maybe four years prior and still bled out. What killed it was the original list price was set by ego, not comps, and the renovation gave the seller false confidence that the number was defensible. The days on market number itself is almost irrelevant above $3M because the buyer pool is so thin that one motivated buyer showing up on day 190 versus day 30 is just luck.

Sellers at that price point almost never cut early enough for it to matter.