U.S. home sellers cut prices and offer concessions as buyers gain leverage

Mortgage rates reached 7.4% in October, their highest in nearly three years

The U.S. housing market has left many sellers unable to relocate for a new job, buy a larger home for a growing family or carry out other decisions that depend on selling. Owners who can take a property off the market generally are doing so; others face pressure to reduce asking prices and contribute thousands of dollars toward buyers’ costs, real estate agents said.

The shift reverses conditions seen not long ago, when a homeowner could reasonably expect to sell fairly quickly and for more than the asking price. Earlier this decade, rock-bottom mortgage rates fueled a buying frenzy, home prices soared and sellers often received well above asking. Surging rates, compounding home-price increases and an economic outlook dimmed by high inflation have since stalled the market. High borrowing costs have put homeownership out of reach for many buyers, while others are delaying purchases in hopes of more favorable conditions, perhaps in the spring.

Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American Financial, said, “The dynamic has shifted back toward more of what we call buyers’ markets rather than sellers’ markets.” He said sellers may need to reduce a price, offer a concession or leave a home on the market longer.

Associated Press reporting said the average rate on a 30-year mortgage briefly dipped below 6% in February before surging as high as 7.4% in October, its highest level in nearly three years. The increase has stifled U.S. home sales. Separately, FRED’s 30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate series showed a raw reading of 7.32% as of Oct. 25, 2026.

Realtor.com said the national median home-listing price fell 1.2% from a year earlier to $419,250 in September, marking the 11th consecutive month of an annual decline. About 21% of September listings had their initial price lowered, a four-year high.

Buyer leverage now extends beyond the purchase price. It is not unusual for home shoppers to ask for and receive money from sellers to cover closing costs. Higher mortgage rates have also given buyers leverage to seek money to buy down a rate for a few years or for the life of the loan, reducing overall borrowing costs. Jake Krimmel, a senior economist at Realtor.com, said, “It’s sort of like an indicator of where the market is right now, with buyers gaining leverage at the expense of sellers, and sellers doing more now to meet buyers halfway.”

Redfin’s September analysis found about 63% more sellers than buyers across the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The buyer count was roughly 929,000, the fewest in records dating to 2013, while sellers reached their highest tally since 2020.

Liz Suder, a 56-year-old finance director in Murphy, Texas, about 20 miles outside Dallas, put her four-bedroom, 3.5-bath house on the market in April 2025 for $750,000. Her three children no longer lived at home, and she had owned the house for 21 years. Suder waited to sell before looking for a smaller place so she would not carry two mortgages, putting her life on hold for more than a year. After lowering the price several times, she took the unsold property off the market six months later and relisted it in February for $725,000 ahead of the spring homebuying season. A home shopper eventually agreed to buy it for $650,000, and Suder added $9,000 toward repairs. “I never expected it to take a full year, and for me to have to reduce the price by that much,” she said.

Rick Ganga, a 58-year-old operations manager in the coastal city of Blaine, Washington, must sell his three-bedroom, 2.5-bath home as part of a divorce. He listed it June 1 for $825,000 and has since held multiple showings. Lowering the price to just under $800,000 produced, in his words, “There’s (been) no offers, virtually zero traffic.”

Ganga said some sellers in his neighborhood have dropped asking prices by $100,000 or more. Because he had owned the home only since 2022, he said he had not built enough equity to cut further: “That’s not anything I’m going to entertain. It doesn’t make sense.” The unsold house is delaying a transfer with his company to another state, and he believes it will probably remain on the market until spring or summer next year.

That imbalance between buyers and sellers could mean Butner has to wait longer before selling his home in Troutdale, Oregon, about 16 miles east of Portland. The 36-year-old service manager already has an offer accepted on a larger home for him and his family near Portland, but cannot complete that purchase until his current house sells. He first needs to find a buyer for his current three-bathroom, two-bath house so he can put the sale proceeds toward the new home. His house has been listed for more than two months at $480,000. He cut $30,000 from the asking price, but that produced only one offer, which fell through. He has also recently installed a new hot water heater and dishwasher and replaced the flooring to make the property more attractive.

“It’s been a roller coaster of emotion for myself, my family, especially my fiancée,” Butner said. “We’ve had this vision of being in our own home and all the kids having their own rooms and all the good stuff that comes along with that. We definitely feel stuck at the moment.”

For buyers, seller contributions toward closing costs and rate buy downs can reduce some purchase costs, but Associated Press reporting said the concessions may not overcome the broader affordability barriers. For sellers, stalled listings are delaying relocations, family expansion and other decisions tied to completing a home sale.