Here's a Key Sign the Housing Market Is Shifting in Advantage to Buyers
May 03, 2023
Sellers are quickly adapting to the new normal in the housing market, and it's resulting in buyers getting better deals on home sales.
Nearly 42% of home sellers gave buyers concessions during the last three months of 2023, according to brokerage Redfin. It's the highest share ever recorded by Redfin, though bear in mind the data only goes back to 2020.
The previous high was nearly 41% of sellers giving concessions to homebuyers during the three-month period ending in July 2020, back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the sake of comparison, during the spring and early summer of 2022, when competition for homes was fierce, only about 25% of sellers were giving buyers concessions.
Seller concessions often involve an agreement in which the seller pays part of the closing costs on a home sale. However, as the housing market has slowed to a crawl because of rising mortgage rates, homebuyers are asking for a lot more.
“Buyers are asking sellers for things that were unheard of during the past few years,” said Van Welborn, a Redfin real estate agent in Phoenix, in a news release.
