Number of Sellers in US Housing Market Exceeds Buyers, Setting Record
According to the latest data from Redfin, the ratio of sellers to buyers in the US real estate market has reached the highest level on record—by August 2026, the number of sellers nationwide exceeded buyers by 57.9%, surpassing the previous second-highest record of 52.1% in July. This marks the strongest "buyer’s market" since Redfin began tracking in 2013.
In August, the number of sellers listed for sale nationwide reached 1,534,918, a 3.9% increase from the previous month, the highest level since early 2020; while the number of buyers was only 972,300, a slight increase of 0.1% from the historical low of the previous month. In February of this year, the number of sellers exceeded buyers by 630,000, setting the largest historical gap at that time, which has since continued to widen.
The ten cities with the largest discrepancies are all located in sunny regions, with Nashville having 139% more sellers than buyers, setting a local record; Miami at 138%, Houston at 131%, Orlando at 122%, Las Vegas at 117%, San Antonio at 116%, Austin at 115%, Dallas at 108%, with Atlanta and Phoenix also in the top ten. Among these, Houston, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Dallas have all set local records for the largest gaps. Currently, only five cities in the US remain as seller's markets, with Nassau County (NY) having 28% more buyers than sellers, making it the strongest seller's market in the US, followed by Newark (NJ) at 27%, Montgomery County (PA) at 20%, Milwaukee at 18%, and San Francisco with 12% more buyers, marking the second occurrence of this in four years.
Data shows that home prices in seller's markets have risen by an average of 5.5% year-on-year, while prices in buyer's markets have only increased by 1.6% year-on-year; in August, 44.7% of home sales nationwide included seller concessions, the highest proportion for August since 2020, up from 42.6% in the same period last year, with 15.8% of transactions including both concessions and price reductions, the highest recorded for August. Atlanta had a concession rate of 72.8%, Charlotte at 67.9%, Phoenix at 67.4%, while San Jose had only 4.2% and New York at 5.7%. Concessions are generally focused on subsidizing closing costs, repair costs, or buying down mortgage rates.
This phenomenon is directly related to rising borrowing costs— the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75% to 4.00% in September, the first rate hike in three years, pushing the 30-year fixed mortgage rate to as high as 7.24% (single-day data on September 16). The average mortgage rate for the week of September 10 was reported at 6.76%, an increase from 6.67% a month ago and 6.35% a year ago; meanwhile, mortgage applications fell by 1% week-on-week and plummeted by 19% year-on-year, Google search volume for home searches decreased by 15% year-on-year, and home viewing activities have cumulatively declined by 3% since the beginning of the year, indicating a weakening buyer demand.
Despite weak demand, the total number of pending sales in September was only 299,126 (seasonally adjusted), a year-on-year decrease of 5.4% and a week-on-week decline of 3.5%, the lowest level in nearly three years; meanwhile, new listings reached 363,298, a year-on-year increase of 1.5%, with total inventory at 1,497,731, also a year-on-year increase of 1.5%, and the months of supply rose to 4.1 months, up from 3.9 months previously, indicating a continued accumulation of inventory while the pace of transactions is slowing.
From the perspective of supply and demand and financing, this imbalance in buying and selling is not merely a fluctuation in market sentiment, but rather driven by the fundamental factor of increased borrowing costs due to the Fed's rate hikes—rising mortgage rates have directly suppressed buyers' purchasing power and willingness to enter the market, while sellers (especially in sunny regions where a large supply was added in previous years) continue to list for various reasons (moving, cashing out, relocating), leading to a persistent accumulation of supply and a continuous shrinkage of demand; the beneficiaries are the current buyers entering the market, who are obtaining concessions, price reductions, and longer negotiation periods in most cities, significantly enhancing their bargaining power; the parties under pressure are sellers and homeowners relying on rising prices, as well as developers and builders in sunny regions who previously relied on rapid absorption of new homes, with price increases clearly slowing down or even facing stagnation pressure in some buyer's markets.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
This round of imbalance between buying and selling did not appear suddenly, but is a continuation of the historical trend that has been expanding since 2025—by February 2026, the number of sellers nationwide had once exceeded buyers by 630,000, setting a historical record at that time, and the gap has been continuously refreshed in July and August, expanding from 52.1% to 57.9%. Cities in sunny regions such as Houston, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Dallas have continuously broken their own historical records, indicating that the current imbalance is the result of the Federal Reserve maintaining a tight monetary environment for over a year, combined with the concentrated delivery of new homes in sunny regions in previous years, rather than a short-term fluctuation triggered by a single event.
The flow of funds and resources is very clear—the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75% to 4.00% in September, directly pushing the 30-year mortgage rate close to 7.24%, which means that the actual financing costs for buyers have been systematically raised, significantly squeezing new purchasing power out of the market; meanwhile, sellers (especially homeowners and developers in sunny regions) continue to push inventory into the market for reasons such as moving, cashing out, or the expiration of previous construction cycles, resulting in a mismatch where "sellers continue to increase supply while buyers' purchasing power is squeezed out by interest rates." 44.7% of transactions require concessions to be completed, with concession rates exceeding 65% in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Phoenix, indicating that sellers are using price and terms concessions to exchange for transaction speed, essentially trading profit for liquidity.
A directly comparable historical case is the adjustment of the real estate market before and after the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 to 2008—at that time, it was also a combination of rising interest rates and the concentrated release of excessive supply in previous years, leading to a strengthening of the buyer's market and forcing sellers to concede in transactions; the difference is that this round is driven by the Federal Reserve's proactive rate hikes to combat inflation, rather than a chain of defaults triggered by deteriorating credit quality. In terms of industry positioning, the US real estate market is currently in a "rate-driven structural buyer's market" phase, with sunny regions adjusting more significantly than other parts of the country due to the concentrated delivery of new homes in recent years, while a few cities in the Northeast such as New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania maintain a seller's market due to limited supply.
Essentially, this represents a transfer of pricing power—over the past few years, pricing power has been more in the hands of sellers (who can set prices independently while buyers are forced to accept premium bids), but as the Federal Reserve's rate hikes continue to push mortgage rates higher and the inventory absorption cycle rises to 4.1 months, pricing power is systematically shifting to buyers, who can demand concessions, negotiate, and have longer decision-making periods; this transfer occurs because rising mortgage rates directly compress the loan amounts buyers can afford at given income levels, effectively locking in buyers' "purchasing power ceiling," while the number of listings by sellers does not decrease in tandem with rising rates, leading to a mismatch in the speed and direction of responses to interest rate changes on both supply and demand sides. The longer this mismatch persists, the more solidified the structural advantages accumulated by buyers in the bargaining chain.