Sellers are trimming prices and offering concessions in a sluggish housing market

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Homeowners in the United States once could reasonably expect to sell quickly and sometimes for more than they asked. That is far less likely in the current housing market.

Nationwide, a slow market is leaving many sellers stuck, unable to move for a new job, purchase a larger home for a growing family, or carry out other major life changes that depend on selling first.

Those who can afford to take their homes off the market often are doing just that. Sellers who stay listed are increasingly being forced to cut prices and contribute thousands of dollars toward buyers' expenses, according to real estate agents.

The shift is a sharp reversal from earlier this decade, when low mortgage rates helped drive a buying frenzy, pushing prices up and often leading to bidding wars above asking price.

Now, higher mortgage rates, years of price increases, and an economy weighed down by inflation have stalled the market. Many buyers are being priced out, while others are waiting for conditions to improve.

With more sellers than buyers, homeowners face a difficult choice: lower prices and offer concessions to attract interest, or wait longer and postpone major 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."

Liz Suder decided to sell her four-bedroom, 3.5-bath home in Murphy, Texas, about 20 miles outside Dallas, after her three children had moved out and she wanted something smaller.

"I was waiting to sell the house before I started looking," said Suder, 56. "I didn't want to have two mortgages."

That decision left her life on hold for more than a year. The finance director, who had owned the home for 21 years, first listed it for $750,000 and later cut the price several times. After six months without a sale, she removed it from the market.

She listed the home again for $725,000 ahead of the spring buying season. More recently, a buyer agreed to purchase it for $650,000, and Suder added $9,000 toward repairs to help close the deal.

"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 needs a buyer for his house in Blaine, Washington, before he can move on with the next stage of his life.

Ganga is going through a divorce that requires the home to be sold. Since it went on the market, he has had several showings of the three-bedroom, 2.5-bath house, but reducing the price to just under $800,000 has not helped.

"There's (been) no offers, virtually zero traffic," said Ganga, 58.

He said some neighboring sellers have cut asking prices by $100,000 or more, but because he bought the home only in 2022, he has not built enough equity to lower his own price any further.

"That's not anything I'm going to entertain," he said. "It doesn't make sense."

Until the house sells, he says he has little choice but to delay a planned company transfer to another state.

"I honestly believe that it will probably sit until spring or summer of next year," he said.

After briefly falling below 6% in February, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage climbed to as high as 7.4% this month, its highest level in nearly three years. The rise has weighed heavily on U.S. home sales.

As more sellers cut prices, the national median home listing price fell in September from a year earlier for the 11th straight month, dropping 1.2% to $419,250, according to Realtor.com. About 21% of listings that month had an initial price cut, a four-year high.

Buyers commonly ask sellers for money to help cover closing costs. Higher mortgage rates are also giving buyers more leverage to request funds that can temporarily or permanently reduce their 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 may help shoppers, but it is still not enough to solve the affordability problems keeping many would-be buyers out of the market.

In the largest U.S. metro areas, there were about 63% more sellers than buyers last month, according to an analysis by Redfin. The number of buyers, roughly 929,000, was the lowest on record dating back to 2013, while the number of sellers reached its highest level since 2020.

That gap could mean a longer wait for Ethan Butner, who is trying to sell his home in Troutdale, Oregon, about 16 miles east of Portland.

Butner, a service manager, already has an accepted offer on a larger home for his family near Portland. Before he can move, he needs to sell his three-bath, two-bath house and use the proceeds for the purchase.

So far, the process has been difficult. The home has been listed for more than two months at $480,000. Butner cut $30,000 from the asking price, but the only offer he received fell through.

He has also installed a new hot water heater and dishwasher and replaced the flooring in hopes of making the home more appealing.

"It's been a roller coaster of emotion for myself, my family, especially my fiancée," Butner, 36, 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."