Price Cuts Are Outrunning New Listings In This Market

This reads like a buyer's market right now. Eight months of supply sits on the shelf here, meaning at the pace homes have actually been selling, it would take about that long just to work through what's currently listed. Add in 13 sellers who marked their price down this week against only 10 new listings that showed up to replace them, and 179 homes sitting active against 21 that actually closed in the past four weeks, and the tilt points toward whoever is doing the buying, not the selling.

That's a read on where things sit this week, not a trend line. There is no earlier week on file yet to compare against, so nobody can honestly say whether that buyer's edge is widening or easing from here. What's certain is the shape of this particular week, and this week's shape favors patience over pressure.

The cuts carry the sharpest part of the story. The biggest one landed on a six bedroom, 4,085 square foot house on Kachina Loop, where the seller pulled $19,900 off the price after 23 days on the market, dropping it to $370,000. Two more sellers each cut exactly $10,000: one on Harley Drive after 48 days, another on Doubles Court after 38. Thirteen total price cuts happened this week. Ten new listings came in behind them. That gap, cuts outrunning fresh inventory, is the clearest concrete signal this market gave up this week.

Here's the part that's harder to see. Twenty one homes sold in the past four weeks, but this market doesn't publish what those homes actually closed for. So the cuts are doing double duty as evidence: they show sellers moving on price before a buyer appears, not after, which is exactly what you'd expect to see when the active pool is this large relative to the sales pace. Whether $10,000 or $19,900 was enough to actually get a deal done is something the public record can't answer.

Days on market by price point tells a related story. Homes asking under the $340,000 median have typically sat 58 days before finding a buyer. Homes asking at or above that median have sat 72 days, two full weeks longer for the same outcome. That's not proof the top half is overpriced. It is proof the top half is working harder for the same result.

If you're selling, price toward the pace the below-median homes are keeping. A cut should land before your listing crosses the 58 day mark those homes are already beating, not after it drifts toward the 72 days the above-median homes are averaging. Waiting to see what the market does first is how a listing ends up needing a second markdown instead of one.

If you're buying, the math favors you for now. Eight months of supply means real options across 179 active homes, and 13 recent cuts mean a meaningful slice of sellers are already negotiating with themselves before you ever make an offer. That doesn't mean every seller will move on price. It means the ones who've already cut once are the ones most likely to keep talking.

What to watch next is whether that 179 figure starts working down against a sales pace holding near 21 every four weeks, or keeps climbing while cuts keep piling up behind it. If sold prices ever become visible in this market, that's the number that will finally say what all these markdowns actually bought their sellers. Until then, the price cut sheet is the closest thing to real time evidence this market has to offer.

Sandee Payne | Designed 2 Sell Real Estate Group