Home sellers are lowering their price and helping buyers to make a deal
in a stagnant market
[October 26, 2026] By
ALEX VEIGA
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Not long ago, a homeowner in America might reasonably
wager they could sell their home fairly quickly, and for more than their
asking price. That's unlikely to be a winning bet now.
Across the nation, a stagnant housing market is leaving many sellers in
limbo, unable to relocate for a new job, buy their next home to
accommodate a growing family, or follow through with other major life
decisions that necessitate selling their home.
Sellers who have the option to pull their listing off the market are
generally doing so. Those who don't are under increased pressure to
lower their asking price and also kick in thousands of dollars toward a
buyer’s costs, real estate agents say.
The trend marks a stark turn from earlier this decade, when sellers
often received well above their asking price as home shoppers empowered
by rock-bottom mortgage rates fueled a buying frenzy that sent home
prices soaring.
Now, the market is stalled by surging mortgage rates, the compounding
effect from years of rising home prices and an economic outlook dimmed
by high inflation. Those factors are putting homeownership out of reach
for many buyers while others delay a purchase and hope for more
favorable conditions, perhaps in the spring.
Sellers easily outnumber buyers and are stuck between uneasy choices: be
more aggressive on price cuts and concessions to woo buyers, or hold out
longer, even if it means delaying major life plans.
"The dynamic has shifted back toward more of what we call buyers’
markets rather than sellers’ markets,” said Mark Fleming, chief
economist at First American Financial. “(That) means you might have to
reduce your price, you might give a concession to get your home sold, it
might have to stay on market longer.”
More than a year after first listing her home, an empty nester can
move on
With her three kids no longer living at home, Liz Suder decided to sell
her four-bedroom, 3.5-bath house in Murphy, Texas, about 20 miles
outside of Dallas, and buy a smaller place.
“I was waiting to sell the house before I started looking,” said Suder,
56. “I didn’t want to have two mortgages.”
Suder wound up putting her life on hold for more than a year. The
finance director, who owned the home for 21 years, initially put the
house on the market in April 2025 for $750,000. Six months later,
despite lowering the price several times, the home still hadn’t sold and
she took it off the market.
Suder relisted the home in February for $725,000 ahead of the spring
homebuying season. But it wasn't until recently that a home shopper
agreed to buy it for $650,000. Suder sweetened the deal by kicking in
$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.
Life on hold, but holding the line on a major price cut
Rick Ganga needs to find a buyer for his home in the coastal city of
Blaine, Washington, before he can begin the next chapter in his life.
Ganga is going through a divorce that requires the home to be sold. He's
had multiple showings of the three-bedroom, 2.5-bath house since it went
on the market on June 1 for $825,000. Lowering the price to just under
$800,000 hasn't helped.
“There’s (been) no offers, virtually zero traffic,” said Ganga, 58.
Ganga said some sellers in his neighborhood have dropped their asking
price by $100,000 or more, but because he’s only owned the home since
2022, he hasn’t built up enough equity to be able to lower the price any
further.
“That’s not anything I’m going to entertain,” he said. “It doesn’t make
sense.”
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Liz Suder poses for a photo in front of her former home that was
sold in Murphy, Texas, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
 Until the home sells, the operations
manager has little choice but to set aside plans to transfer with
his company to another state.
“I honestly believe that it will probably sit until spring or summer
of next year,” he said.
Sellers losing leverage as the housing market stalls
After briefly dipping below 6% in February, the average rate on a
30-year mortgage surged as high as 7.4% this month, its highest
level in nearly three years. The upward march in rates has stifled
U.S. home sales.
With many sellers lowering their asking price, the national median
home listing price declined in September from a year earlier for the
11th month in a row, dropping 1.2% to $419,250, according to
Realtor.com. All told, about 21% of listings in September had their
initial price lowered, a four-year high.
It’s not unusual for home shoppers to ask for — and receive — money
from sellers to put toward their closing costs. Higher mortgage
rates are also giving buyers leverage to press sellers for money to
buy down their rate for a few years or for the life of the loan,
reducing their overall borrowing costs.
“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,” said Jake Krimmel, a senior
economist at Realtor.com.
That's good news for home shoppers, but may not be enough to
overcome the affordability hurdles keeping many prospective
homebuyers out of the market.
Consider, last month there were about 63% more sellers than
homebuyers across the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, according
to an analysis by Redfin. And the number of buyers — roughly 929,000
— represented the fewest on record dating back to 2013, while the
tally of sellers jumped to its highest level since 2020.
Sluggish housing market stymies a plan to buy a bigger home
That considerable imbalance between buyers and sellers means Ethan
Butner may have longer to wait before he sells his home in
Troutdale, Oregon, about 16 miles east of Portland.
Butner, a service manager, already has an offer accepted on a new,
more spacious home for him and his family near Portland. First he
needs to find a buyer for his three-bathroom, two-bath house so he
can put the proceeds toward the new home.
So far, it isn’t going well. The house has been on the market more
than two months for $480,000. Butner slashed $30,000 off his asking
price, but that generated only one offer, which fell through.
Butner recently installed a new hot water heater and dishwasher, and
replaced the flooring in hopes of making the property more
attractive.
“It’s been a roller coaster of emotion for myself, my family,
especially my fiancée,′ said Butner, 36. “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.”
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