He Thought His Home Might Sell for $30 Million. Fifteen Months Later, It’s ‘The Steal of the Century.’

Would someone really pay $30 million for his Nevada ranch? David Clark wasn’t sure.

But amid the rollicking luxury market, Mr. Clark said he agreed to list his 25-acre Washoe Valley property for that amount in August 2021. A similar retreat on Lake Tahoe could fetch multiples more, he reasoned. Plus, his land came with a roughly 18,000-square-foot mansion and multiple wells, ponds and outbuildings.

Fifteen months later amid a market correction, however, Mr. Clark, who owns a financial services firm, has slashed the price several times and still has no takers. The ranch is currently asking $11.5 million—a nearly 62% reduction from the original price—and Mr. Clark said he won’t go lower.

“I think we missed the window of opportunity,” he said, saying the property is now “the steal of the century.”

Aspirational prices for luxury homes around the country are falling back to Earth, as the seemingly unstoppable real-estate frenzy of the last 18 months begins to dissipate. Real-estate agents said buyers spooked by economic uncertainty are suddenly hesitant to overpay and some are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how things shake out. Having lost the upper hand, some sellers eager to move properties are slashing prices and selling for deep discounts.

A year ago, the luxury real-estate market was like “this huge party with champagne and caviar and everyone was thinking it was never going to end,” said Bess Freedman, chief executive of Brown Harris Stevens, a luxury brokerage. “Now, it’s like the lights have been turned on. It’s a different environment.”

Whether it is inflation, stock fluctuations, recession warnings or the war in Ukraine, buyers can start to feel like “there are too many headwinds,” Ms. Freedman said. “With sellers who are priced too aspirationally, our agents are encouraging them to bring them down to a place where buyers would make an offer,” she said.

Recent data from brokerage Redfin shows an increase in the number of significant price cuts in the luxury market. Among all listings above $10 million between August and October 2022, there was a 28.77% increase in price reductions of at least 20% compared with the same period in 2021.

Price reductions have been ticking up over the past three quarters, said Jonathan Miller, founder of real-estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel. In Manhattan’s luxury market, the average price cut during the third quarter of the year was 11.7%, compared with 7.8% in the second quarter and 6.2% in the first, Mr. Miller said.

Jeff Franklin, creator of the television sitcom “Full House,” said he recently lowered the price of his Beverly Hills estate by roughly $25 million. First asking $85 million, the roughly 21,000-square-foot, Andalusian-style estate is now listed for $59.995 million, a nearly 30% reduction, he said. Located on about 3.6 acres near Benedict Canyon, Mr. Franklin said he purchased the property from a developer roughly two decades ago when it was only partially constructed and spent millions finishing it. The nine-bedroom estate comes with some unusual amenities, such as a shark tank and a 35-foot waterslide.

Much like Mr. Clark, Mr. Franklin said that he had originally put an “aggressive” price tag on his property on the advice of his agents, but, when the market wasn’t responding, he felt they “needed to bring it down to earth a little more.” Mr. Franklin, who has already relocated to Miami and is therefore eager to sell the property, said he opted for a significant price drop to dramatically increase the potential pool of buyers for the property.

“I wanted to make sure the house was priced as competitively as possible,” he said, noting that he has had a few “serious buyers” come through the property but none of them have made a good offer. “There’s still buyers out there but not as many,” he said.

Josh Altman of Douglas Elliman, one of his agents, said the price was appropriate for the market at that time and because the property was so unique. “The mentality of the buyer in this market now is different,” he said. “They want a deal.”

In June, Sue Gross, ex-wife of retired billionaire bond king Bill Gross, reduced the asking price on her Beverly Hills estate to $28.9 million, a significant reduction from the $38 million she asked when first listing the property in July 2021. (It was also less than the $35 million she paid in 2018 to purchase the property from Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, records show.) The property, which is located above Sunset Boulevard, is Midcentury Modern in style and spans about 5,300 square feet with four bedrooms. The price cut appeared to do the trick; the property sold for $23.25 million, a roughly 39% reduction compared with the original asking price, five months later. Ms. Gross couldn’t be reached for comment.

In New York, real-estate investor and prominent art collector Edward Minskoff also recently slashed the price of his apartment, a co-op at 730 Park Avenue on the Upper East Side. The property asked $17.7 million when it first listed in May but the price has been reduced three times, most recently to $12.5 million, StreetEasy shows. Still, he will likely make a sizable profit over the $210,000 he paid for the unit in the 1980s. Mr. Minskoff didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some markets are more vulnerable to the slowdown, given how suddenly and sharply they rose during Covid. In Houston, for instance, trial lawyer Tony Buzbee listed his roughly 12,200-square-foot home for $27.5 million in February, seeking to capitalise on the market frenzy there. He said he was motivated by heightened demand and lack of inventory in the market. “A lot of people were the same way,” he said. “We were all going to make a lot of money.”

Within a few months, “reality set in,” coinciding with a market slowdown, and Mr. Buzbee reduced the price to $25.5 million. It is now asking $20 million—nearly $7 million more than he spent in 2013, when he said he paid just over $13 million for the home. Since last year, the buyer pool has thinned, he said. “Let’s be honest. Houston is not Miami. You don’t have people willing to plunk down $20 million unless they have a reason to be in Houston.”

Los Angeles-area real-estate agent Jade Mills of Coldwell Banker Realty said she sees some of the major price cuts as being long overdue. Some homes were overpriced long before the market dip as sellers became overly aggressive with their pricing amid the Covid-induced real-estate boom, she said. “The sellers became so arrogant, in a way, about their house being amazing and they wanted more and more money,” she said.

In reality, the dynamics of many of these luxury markets are still healthy, with limited inventory and demand from buyers, Ms. Mills said. The problem, she said, is that “the buyers all think that the market is going down much faster than it is” and are expecting that sellers will negotiate more than they are willing to do. That is leading to a “standoff” and a reduction in deal flow.

In Aspen, for instance, where there was a real-estate feeding frenzy during the pandemic, the number of sales in October dropped 51% compared with the prior year, reflecting a shift in the market, according to Tim Estin of Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty, who publishes a monthly market snapshot. Pending sales were down 60% year-over-year.

Aspen agent Riley Warwick of Douglas Elliman said that his buyers are trying to reconcile higher prices at a time when their stock portfolios are down. “Whether they’ve got the money or not is not the question—it’s more the psychological,” he said. In that environment, buyers are unwilling to overpay.

He said he recently toured an off-market property asking $40 million with a client, who was “ready, willing and able” to spend that amount for the right home. “That property was probably worth more like $30 million,” Mr. Riley said. He said they made an offer, but didn’t reach a deal.

“My biggest challenge is finding a great product,” he said, “and then finding a realistic seller who is not high off the last two years’ run up.”

Some sellers who’ve slashed prices have been rewarded. In October, former U.S. Ambassador Bruce S. Gelb sold a New York City apartment for $17.5 million, six years after listing the Fifth Avenue co-op for $65 million. Mr. Gelb, who purchased the home several decades ago for an unknown amount, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Likewise, Miami Dolphins owner and real-estate developer Stephen Ross sold his Manhattan home, a penthouse at the complex formerly known as Time Warner Center, for $40 million, far less than the $75 million he asked for in June 2019. During that time, the price was cut several times and was represented by several different real-estate agents.

And in East Hampton, N.Y., art and antique dealers Barbara and Lloyd Macklowe recently went into contract to sell their waterfront home after a roughly $20 million price adjustment. The couple paid $3.45 million for the 1.5-acre property, between Georgica Pond and the Atlantic Ocean, in 1992, records show. Listed for $60 million in October 2021, it has a roughly 6,100-square-foot house and 170 feet of ocean frontage. The Macklowes couldn’t be reached for comment.

Mr. Miller, the appraiser, said although sellers are capitulating to market conditions, “there are no fire sales.” Certain markets—such as Miami, Palm Beach and Malibu, Calif.—seem insulated from the market slowdown impacting the rest of the country, thanks to limited inventory. Suzanne Frisbie of the Corcoran Group said scarcity is the “big driver” of ultra luxury real-estate values in Palm Beach, where there is a limited number of homes and even fewer on the water. “There’s only so much of it,” she said. In 2012, the median residential price was $2.4 million. So far in 2022, the median price is $11.8 million, she said.

Some sellers who have slashed the price of their properties say they are not willing to chase the market down much further. Many of the wealthiest sellers can afford to hold on to their homes until demand shifts back up.

Mr. Clark, the seller in Nevada, said he expected his property—which has a greenhouse, three wells and a geothermal heat pump—to appeal to Covid-conscious buyers who wanted a safe, self-contained place to live during the worst part of the pandemic. The Clarks purchased the bank-owned property for $4 million in 2009, records show. Mr. Clark said he invested $7 million into upgrades, including a $1 million geothermal system. He estimated it would cost north of $40 million to replace the main residence, built in the late 1960s, which has a 3,800-square-foot atrium with a glass roof that opens and an indoor pool.

“I’m just sitting and waiting,” he said. “Sooner or later a buyer will come. If not, I’ll refurnish it and live in it myself. I’m not going to let the market dictate to me, when I know the worth of it.”

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.