Sellers Are Cutting Prices Faster Than Buyers Are Showing Up

This reads as a buyer's market, and the numbers say it's leaning further that way. Sellers are repricing faster than new homes are arriving, and far faster than buyers are closing.

Something is out of balance right now across the four markets this report tracks.

It isn't a slow leak. It's sellers moving on price before the market moves on them.

Across the four markets combined, sellers logged 252 price cuts in the final week of August. That was more than the 191 new listings that came on in that same week, and far more than the 50 sales that closed across the trailing four weeks. Active inventory stood at 2,930 homes, which against that sales pace works out to about 55 months of supply.

There's no prior week on record to compare any of this against, so treat it as a snapshot rather than a trend. But a snapshot can still tell you something. More sellers cut price in a single week than the market added in new listings, and both numbers dwarf what actually sold.

The imbalance isn't spread evenly. The priciest market in the group, where the median list price runs $558,500, carried 93 of the territory's 252 cuts and 82 of its 191 new listings that week, more of both than anywhere else. It also holds the largest share of active inventory, at 1,125 homes. The market adding the most new competition every week is also the one absorbing the deepest round of markdowns.

That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. The most expensive market is where sellers have the furthest to fall on price, and it shows up first in the cut counts.

Across the whole territory, the median home sat 50 days before its status changed, whether that meant a sale or a price cut. Seven weeks is enough time for a seller to watch a listing go quiet and decide to act before a buyer forces the issue.

If you're buying right now, this is a market with real room to negotiate. A home that's already through one price cut is a seller who has already shown you where their floor might be. Start there instead of chasing something still priced at its opening ambition.

If you're selling, especially in that priciest market, look at what you're competing against before you set a number. Eighty-two new listings arrived there in that single week, on top of ninety-three cuts already in motion. Pricing to what's actually moving beats pricing to what the house next door sold for a while back, or you end up in next week's cut count instead of this week's sold column.

What happens next is the real question, and it's an honest one because this week has no baseline yet. Next week's cut count, measured against this one, will be the first read on whether sellers are catching up to the market or just falling further behind it. Watch the priciest market first. It's already carrying more new supply and more markdowns than the other three combined, which means it has the most room left to move in either direction.

For now, the plainest read of the numbers is this: more homes are getting cheaper than are getting sold, and that gap doesn't close on its own.