09/16/2026
Interesting read📚
This is what happens when homes stay expensive, mortgage rates stay high, and buyers finally start saying no.
For the last few years, sellers had a lot of leverage because inventory was tight and buyers were fighting over whatever came on the market.
That is changing.
Right now, there are roughly 563,000 more sellers than buyers in the market.
That is not a tiny imbalance.
That’s the kind of gap that starts forcing sellers to get more realistic about price, condition, concessions, and how badly they actually want to move.
Because buyers are not stupid.
A house can be “worth” whatever you want on Zillow, but if the payment is ridiculous and there are 10 other options nearby, buyers are going to keep scrolling.
This doesn’t mean we’re suddenly heading into some 2008-style collapse.
But it does mean the days of listing a house high, doing nothing to it, and expecting five offers by Sunday night are getting a lot harder to pull off in a lot of markets.
And if this gap keeps widening, buyers are going to keep getting more leverage.
That’s when you start seeing more price cuts, more seller-paid closing costs, more repair concessions, and a whole lot more uncomfortable conversations between sellers and their agents.
The market is finally making sellers compete again.
