Prices Dropping Like Dominoes

More home sellers are discounting their home's list price this winter than at any time in the past few years, and buyers are gaining more power in the market, according to new data.

More than 20 percent of homes of the nation's for-sale housing stock had two price drops in the last month from mid-January to mid-February. In Fresno, Calif., the share was roughly 40.4 percent of homes with price cuts. Rounding out the top 5 metros with the biggest shares of price-dropped homes are: Tampa, Fla., Indianapolis, Bakersfield, Calif., and Phoenix. Redfin reports that this is the largest February rate in a decade.

Price drops are a highly cyclical measure, typically peaking late in the year and falling dramatically to start each new year, and this year is no different. However, even though the share of homes with price drops is down quite a bit from the fall and isn’t up year-over-year as much as it was then either (+5.5 points then vs. +3.6 points now), it is starting 2019 at a much higher level than the past several years.

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