These Are the Housing Markets Seeing the Most—and Least—Price Reductions

Today’s homebuyers are contending with inflated housing prices, limited supply, and soaring borrowing costs. Rather than increasing their budgets or sacrificing their most desired home features, many are waiting patiently for market conditions to improve. In the meantime, sellers are struggling to offload their homes as demand dries up, and in a growing number of housing markets, the only option left is to lower listing prices.

Home sellers are making the most significant reductions in overpriced markets such as Austin, Texas, Phoenix, and St. Port Lucie, Fla., where prices were cut by 25.4%, 24.6%, and 23% of all listings, respectively, Realtor.com reports.

Nationally, nearly one-fifth of all homes on the market had price reductions in February, according to the most recent Realtor.com data. The number of sellers who slashed prices doubled in the last year, to more than 18% in February—up from about 9% last year.

Some of the steepest cuts have been in the Sun Belt markets, where prices rose at the fastest clip during the height of the pandemic. Now that mortgage rates are up from the mid-2% range, into the high 6% territory, many buyers simply can’t afford those higher prices.

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