MW The 10 housing markets where asking prices are falling fast this spring home-buying season

By Aarthi Swaminathan

'We're seeing a market that's rebalancing, offering more choices for shoppers,' says Realtor.com's chief economist

Spring is in the air, and more deals are sprouting up in the real-estate market.

The share of for-sale listings with a price cut nationally hit the highest level since 2016 for the month of March, according to a new report from Realtor.com, a real-estate platform.

The number of new home listings is also rising fast, reaching the highest level in three years for March, the company noted in its latest monthly report.

"We're seeing a market that's rebalancing, offering more choices for shoppers," Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com, said in a statement.

(Realtor.com is operated by News Corp subsidiary Move Inc.; MarketWatch publisher Dow Jones is also a subsidiary of News Corp.)

The uptick in for-sale listings offers a sliver of relief for prospective buyers, who are still contending with elevated mortgage rates and high home prices. The median U.S. listing price was $424,900 as of March, and the number of new listings was up 10.2% from the same month a year ago.

Home sellers are picking up the pace and offering deals as the spring home-buying season begins. About 32% of all existing homes sold in the U.S. have historically been purchased between February and May, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The willingness of sellers to cut prices is a marked shift in the housing market. Homeowners have had the upper hand in the last three years, as many of those who purchased homes during the pandemic, when mortgage rates were ultralow, have stayed put.

That dynamic created the so-called lock-in effect, which has limited the number of homes available for sale each year. In 2023 and 2024, the lock-in effect pushed home sales to the lowest level in nearly 30 years, according to the NAR.

Read more: Why 2024 was arguably the toughest year for home buyers and sellers in 30 years

But that frozen market is now showing signs of thawing, with inventory levels rising and home sellers slashing prices. Nearly 1 in 5 homeowners who were selling their property, or 17.4% of active listings, included price reductions in March, Realtor.com said. That was the highest share in any March since 2016.

"Historically, a buyer's market has been defined as when months of supply reaches four to six months - but old definitions don't fit the reality of today's market," Chen Zhao, economics research lead at real-estate brokerage Redfin $(RDFN)$, said in mid-February.

"Many buyers don't feel like they are in a buyer's market ... but we are more than halfway through the decade and this is the first time we can say that buyers have as much, if not more, power than sellers," she added.

Below are the markets with the highest share of price reductions, according to Realtor.com. In other words, price cuts were most common for homes listed in these cities:

   Metro area                                Share of listings with price reductions 
   Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, Ariz.              32.60% 
   Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla.     28.90% 
   Jacksonville, Fla.                        27.70% 
   San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas          25.10% 
   Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla.           24.70% 
   Denver-Aurora-Centennial, Colo.           24.40% 
   Tucson, Ariz.                             24.20% 
   Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas        23.40% 
   Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore.-Wash.  22.70% 
   Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas       22.20% 

Sellers are cutting prices in these markets as there are too many homes for sale and demand is "tempered," Realtor.com noted.

On the flip side, demand is still hot in some markets where buyers are fighting to the finish to win bids.

As MarketWatch reported previously, hot demand from buyers in Northeastern markets like New York City and Hartford, Conn., are making it tough to buy, with few deals to be found.

In New York, only 7% of home listings had a price cut in March, while in Hartford, only 5.5% of listings had a price cut.

Read more: How buyers are winning bidding wars in a market where homes are selling for $620,000 over ask

-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

April 03, 2025 06:00 ET (10:00 GMT)

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