There are about 1.42 million homes for sale in the United States, up 4.4% from a year ago and 42.7% above where inventory sat three years ago. Homes take an average of 56 days to sell. Supply is running at 4.7 months. By every structural measure this is a different market than the one buyers were shut out of. And the median sale price is still $400,000, up 2.6% over the year.

Leverage Shows Up Somewhere Else

Sellers are not cutting list prices much, because the ones who bought or refinanced at 3% are under no pressure to sell at all. They can simply wait. What they will do instead is pay.

In metro Phoenix, more than half of closings between $200,000 and $600,000 now include seller concessions. That is the shape of this market nationally: the sticker holds, and the negotiation moves to everything around it.

Concessions are money. A seller covering closing costs, or buying down the mortgage rate for the first two years, or paying for the roof the inspection flagged, is transferring real value without touching the number that gets reported to the comparable sales database. Sellers prefer it precisely because it does not set a lower comp for the neighbors.

The Market Is Not One Market

Roughly two thirds of the 900 plus tracked markets still posted price gains over the past year. About a third saw declines.

That split matters more than the national median. Buyer leverage in a metro with rising inventory and falling prices is genuine. In a market where inventory is still tight, the same national headline buys you nothing at the negotiating table.

What Fifty-Six Days Means

Days on market is the most useful single number for a buyer, because it tells you how long the seller has been carrying two housing payments or watching a listing go stale.

A house that has been listed a week is a seller who believes the asking price. A house at day seventy is a seller doing arithmetic. The average is 56 days, which means a substantial share of inventory sits well past that.

Final Take

If you are shopping, the practical move is to stop negotiating price first and start negotiating the rate.

A permanent buydown, paid for by the seller, costs them the same as a price cut of similar size and is worth considerably more to you, because it lowers the payment for as long as you hold the loan rather than lowering the loan a little. On a $400,000 purchase the difference between the two structures runs into real monthly money.

Ask what the seller will contribute, not what they will come down to. In a market where sellers are defending the sticker and quietly paying to close, that is where the leverage actually is.

Written by Deniss Slinkins
Millionaire Core