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The tables are turning in America’s housing market, with house hunters gaining the upper hand in much of the country — though some pockets remain fiercely competitive.
There were 62.6% more home sellers than buyers nationwide in September, the largest gap in Redfin’s records dating back to 2013, when the housing market was recovering from the Great Recession and housing crash, according to a new report released Wednesday.
The imbalance has widened for four consecutive months, up from 56.9% in August, as high housing costs and economic uncertainty continue to keep prospective buyers on the sidelines.
An estimated 928,892 Americans were actively looking to buy a home in September, the lowest level on record and down 2.4% from August. Meanwhile, the number of sellers climbed to 1.51 million, the highest since March 2020.
The result is a housing market where buyers who can afford to enter have more properties to choose from and greater leverage to negotiate.
“This is a buyer’s market born out of caution, not strength,” Redfin senior economist Asad Khan said in the report.
“Buyers have tremendous negotiating power in most of the country because so many other would-be buyers have been priced out of the market, or scared off by economic uncertainty,” he added.
The shift is especially pronounced across the Sun Belt, where years of robust homebuilding have added inventory even as demand has cooled.
Of the 50 major metropolitan areas analyzed, 41 were classified as buyer’s markets — the most in Redfin’s records.
Miami led the nation, with 158.9% more sellers than buyers, up from 134.5% in August. Nashville and Houston followed, while Tampa’s seller surplus jumped to 103.7%, up from 82.2% just a month earlier.
Florida’s housing market has faced mounting pressure from rising home insurance premiums, homeowners association fees and an influx of new listings, giving buyers more options and leaving sellers competing for a shrinking pool of house hunters.
“Sometimes, when buyer demand drops, seller activity drops right along with it—so the overall balance of power barely budges,” Khan said in the report. “But that’s not what we’re seeing this month. In every single metro where the number of buyers fell from the month before, the gap between sellers and buyers increased, causing the market to tilt further in buyers’ favor. That’s because sellers didn’t pull back nearly as fast, or pull back at all.”
But the picture looks dramatically different in the New York City suburbs.
Nassau County on Long Island ranked as the nation’s strongest seller’s market, with 28.6% fewer sellers than buyers — meaning competition remains fierce despite the nationwide slowdown.
Redfin estimated that Nassau County had 11,120 prospective buyers and 7,935 sellers in September, underscoring the area’s tight housing supply.
Nearby Newark, NJ, also bucked the national trend, with 18.5% fewer sellers than buyers. Montgomery County, PA, Milwaukee and San Francisco rounded out the country’s five seller’s markets.
Redfin attributed the resilience of the New York metropolitan area’s housing market to years of limited construction and persistent demand for homes near a major employment hub.
San Francisco, meanwhile, has benefited from the artificial intelligence boom, which has generated new wealth and intensified competition among buyers.
The divide is also showing up in home prices. Across the five seller’s markets, sale prices rose an average of 6.4% year over year in August, compared with just 1% across the nation’s buyer’s markets.