MW Home sellers face a tough choice right now: cut their asking price, or roll the dice on a better deal later

By Aarthi Swaminathan

About 85,000 homeowners pulled their listing from the market in September, while others cut prices by as much as $25,000 to sell their house, according to industry data

As sellers navigate a stressful housing market, buyers are gaining the upper hand, as price cuts become more commonplace.

If you want to sell your house, ask yourself this question: Is the price just right?

Pricing your home too high has resulted in sellers being burned by little interest from buyers - or even none at all. That leaves them with two choices: cut the price in order to generate interest or remove the listing altogether.

As sellers adjust their expectations to reflect the new reality in the housing market, one where buyers are increasingly gaining power, discounts on homes for sale are becoming increasingly common across most of America.

Those who don't like the idea of cutting prices - perhaps even repeatedly - are choosing another option: delisting. The share of homes for sale that are removed from the market has also climbed rapidly.

It's a painful housing market for sellers today. A home is one of the biggest purchases most people make in their lives, and it's a major investment for most of the middle class. When homeowners are not able to sell, it's not only emotionally but also financially stressful, potentially causing them to delay future life changes, such as buying a bigger or smaller house or moving to a new place for a new job.

Buyers remain mostly uninterested in the market due to how expensive homes still are, on top of economic uncertainty.

Home buyers remain on the sidelines because prices and interest rates are too high. In October, contract signings of homes fell 0.4% from the same month a year ago, according to data from the National Association of Realtors on Tuesday. In other words, home-sales activity is running at a pace even slower than last October, even though mortgage rates are at about the same level.

For sellers, that's bad news. About four in 10 people surveyed by housing-finance giant Fannie Mae in September said it's a bad time to sell.

To be sure, the market is becoming a little friendlier for buyers. Even though homes were spending longer on the market, as is typical between November through February, that provides stronger negotiating power to buyers during the holiday season, Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, said in a statement.

Home sellers are cutting prices by about $25,000 overall to lure buyers

Cutting prices is one strategy for home sellers. And that's caused home-price appreciation to stall.

The latest measure of home-price growth by Case Shiller reflected the gradual slowdown in prices.

In September 2025, home prices across the nation grew 1.3% from a year ago, the weakest reading since the middle of 2023, according to Nicholas Godec, head of fixed income tradables & commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

"A deeper look at momentum shows clear weakening," Godec said in a statement. "Over the past six months, national home prices have risen just 0.4%, a gain that is only marginal in nominal terms and negative in real inflation-adjusted terms."

Part of the reason home-price growth is declining is that sellers are cutting prices.

Real-estate platform Zillow (Z) reported that some sellers are offering nearly 10% off a home's list price.

In markets such as Pittsburgh, sellers were cutting prices by $20,000, or about 9% of the metro's typical home value in October, according to the platform. Pittsburgh saw the biggest relative discount among major markets. About 31% of listings in Pittsburgh had a price cut.

Second place on the list went to New Orleans, where homes were discounted by 9% of the metro's typical home value, followed by Austin in third place. About 24% of homes in New Orleans and 30% of home listings in Austin had a price cut. Austin was a boomtown during the pandemic, with home prices surging over that period.

In Pittsburgh, about 31% of home sellers cut their asking price in October. The cumulative price cut was $20,000, which represents about 9% of the typical home's value in the metro area.

Nationwide, about 27% of for-sale listings had a price cut, according to the company. The median cumulative price cut as of October was $25,000.

Sellers may be willing to cut prices as they can still net a gain overall if enough time has passed since they bought the house.

"Most homeowners have seen their home values soar over the past several years, which gives them the flexibility for a price cut or two while still walking away with a profit," Kara Ng, a senior economist at Zillow, said in a statement.

Buyers in more expensive markets are seeing even more eye-popping price cuts. In San Jose, buyers are seeing the biggest median discounts from the initial list price at $70,900, and in Los Angeles, $61,000. About 23% of sellers were cutting prices in San Jose and 24% in L.A.

85,000 home sellers took their homes off the market, a 28% surge

Delisting is another strategy that's becoming increasingly common among sellers.

Sellers frustrated with price cuts are delisting their homes and waiting for a more favorable market - and hopefully, a better price.

Real-estate brokerage Redfin $(RKT)$ reported a 28% annual jump in sellers pulling their homes off the market rather than accepting price cuts.

Nationwide, about 5.5% of total listings were delisted in September, the brokerage said.

That's about 85,000 sellers yanking their homes from the market in September, the highest level for the month in eight years.

Delistings were most common in Miami and nearby Fort Lauderdale, as well as Dallas, Redfin data found. Nearly 8% of all home listings in Miami were pulled off the market.

The homeowners most likely to pull their home from the market owned their property for under five years. Nearly half of delistings, or 47%, were from sellers who purchased the property within such time.

Recent buyers were reluctant for a few reasons.

One was their low mortgage rate. About a third of delistings were by homeowners who purchased the property between 2020 and 2023. Many of these homeowners likely have an ultralow mortgage rate, which they may not be willing to give up on top of a lower price for the house.

Half of the homes removed from the market were owned by sellers who bought the property within the last five years.

Another reason for choosing to delist is a potential financial loss. Roughly 15% of the homes delisted in September were at risk of selling at a loss, Redfin said.

'Sellers aren't motivated because, frankly, it's no longer a great time to sell; today's listings are getting one or two offers at best, compared to 10 a few years ago,'Aditi Jain, a real-estate agent with Redfin

As a result, the current housing data points to a challenging housing market for sellers who are forced to choose between two unappealing options.

"Sellers aren't motivated because, frankly, it's no longer a great time to sell; today's listings are getting one or two offers at best, compared to 10 a few years ago," Aditi Jain, a Boston-based real-estate agent with Redfin, said in the report. "They'd rather rent out their home than sell for a low price, and people who don't need to move now are opting to stay put and re-list in a year or two."

-Aarthi Swaminathan

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 25, 2025 12:40 ET (17:40 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.