By Chad Taylor, the Taylor-Made Team
One of the hardest things about a changing real estate market is recognizing the change while you are still in the middle of it. By the time the statistics make the shift obvious, buyers may have been telling us about it for months.
I sometimes think of the housing market like the pirate ship ride at the fair. If you have ever ridden one, you know how it works. The ship climbs toward one end, slows as it reaches the top and almost seems to stall there for a moment. Then it begins moving back the other direction. As it gets closer to the bottom, it starts moving faster.
For several years, especially from 2020 through 2024, the housing market seemed to stall near the top of that ride on the seller’s side. Sellers had almost all of the leverage.
There were simply too many buyers chasing too few homes. Multiple offers became common. Buyers regularly paid above asking price, shortened inspection periods, or waived their rights to inspections altogether simply to make their offer more competitive.
We stayed there long enough that it started to feel normal. It wasn’t.
Now the ship is moving again. That doesn’t mean we have suddenly gone from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. Real estate doesn’t usually work that way. But the balance of power is changing, and I believe it is changing faster than many sellers realize.
The interesting thing is that home prices are often one of the last places you see that change. Housing markets usually change behavior first.
Showings slow down. Buyers become more selective. Second showings don’t automatically become offers. Homes that might have received three or four offers a few years ago receive one—or none.
Buyers also become more comfortable negotiating. Inspection requests get a little longer. Seller-paid closing costs and other concessions become more common. Days on market increase. Eventually, price reductions become more frequent.
Only after all of that do the closed-sale statistics begin to tell the story. That is because closed sales are inherently backward-looking. A home closing today may have gone under contract a month ago, and the seller may have made the pricing decision several weeks before that.
Buyer behavior is happening right now, and that distinction matters because the national numbers are beginning to show some of these same signals.
In August, the supply of existing homes for sale reached 4.9 months nationally, the highest level in more than a decade. Existing-home sales declined 2% from July, and pending sales were 4.7% lower than a year earlier. Yet the national median sale price was still 1.6% higher than it was a year ago.
At first glance, that can seem contradictory. If buyers have more choices and sales are slowing, why haven’t prices fallen dramatically?
Part of the answer is that sellers don’t immediately adjust their expectations when the market changes. They understandably look at what the neighbor sold for. They remember what similar homes were bringing six months ago. They may have watched homes sell quickly for years and assume their experience will be similar.
Meanwhile, buyers are looking at the homes available today. That means buyers often recognize a changing market before sellers do.
But buyers don’t necessarily announce that change by immediately making low offers.
Quite often, they simply don’t make an offer at all. They keep looking.
That is one of the most important things for sellers to understand about today’s market. A lack of offers is still information. The market doesn’t have to tell you that a home is overpriced with a dramatically low offer. Sometimes it tells you through silence.
There are other reasons prices can remain fairly resilient even while buyer leverage increases. Many homeowners have significant equity and relatively low mortgage rates, so they aren’t under tremendous pressure to sell. Some will simply take their home off the market rather than accept a price they don’t like.
And the homes that are priced correctly, prepared well and located in desirable areas can still sell quickly—and sometimes still receive multiple offers. This isn’t a market where every seller suddenly loses. It is a market where sellers have to compete for buyers again.
That’s a very different mindset from the one we became accustomed to a few years ago.
If we go back to the pirate ship, somewhere near the bottom of the ride is what we would call a balanced market—neither buyers nor sellers holding an overwhelming advantage. But the ship doesn’t necessarily stop at the bottom. It moves through it.
That is why I think balanced markets are better thought of as part of a transition than some permanent destination. The goal isn’t to predict exactly how far the ship will swing. For a seller, the goal is simply to recognize that it is moving.
There is an old saying that markets change slowly, and then suddenly. I think that describes what many sellers are experiencing right now.
For months, the changes can feel subtle. Showings become less frequent. Homes take a little longer to sell. Buyers ask for more. Then suddenly a seller looks around and realizes the market they thought they were selling into isn’t quite the market that exists anymore.
None of this means sellers should panic. In fact, the sellers who recognize a market change early are often in the best position because they still have choices.
They can make sure their home competes on condition. They can pay attention to how buyers are responding. They can adjust their pricing if necessary. And they can negotiate from a position of understanding instead of reacting several months later.
That is really the lesson of a transitioning market.
Don’t wait for the statistics to tell you what buyers are already telling you.
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