The housing market has shifted in favor of buyers — depending on where you live

TAMPA, Fla. — Americans looking to purchase a home in certain US cities might be pleasantly surprised to find the tide is shifting their way this spring after years of challenging affordability.

There were 3.7 months of for-sale supply on the market in January, the most in six years, according to a recent Redfin analysis. That means it would take more than three months to sell all the homes that were listed for sale in January, given monthly average sales volume.

The findings point to a housing market where sellers are slowly losing leverage after years of having the upper hand. Generally, more than four months of supply sitting on the market indicates a full-tilt buyers’ market.

Spring has long been considered the busiest home shopping season in America as warmer temperatures and the end of the school year tend to entice new buyers and sellers into the market. However, persistently high borrowing costs and few new home listings stymied the action last year: Home sales fell to the lowest level in three decades in 2024.

Though mortgage rates remain similarly elevated heading into the busy season this year, determined buyers so far face less competition and have more options, according to recent data.

An unusually high number of homes have been pulled from sale recently, a sign that many home sellers are no longer fielding multiple competitive offers. Data from CoreLogic found that 7.6% of homes on the market were delisted in January — the highest level in over a decade.

“When some sellers notice that buyers are asking for more concessions or there’s softening demand, they may decide to delist and wait,” Hepp said.

Surge in Florida homes for sale

As the famous saying goes, location is everything when it comes to real estate.

Home shoppers in southeast Florida have the most buying power of anywhere else in the country. In cities like Cape Coral and Miami, there are more than 11 months of home supply on the market, according to Redfin. Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Jacksonville are also strong buyers’ markets.

“There were winners and losers during the pandemic years, and Florida was a clear winner,” Jeremy Guillette, a Realtor who works in the southeast Florida area said. The state saw an influx of residents during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic, causing intense competition for homes for sale.

“Now the market is totally different. There is definitely a lot more power as a buyer right now,” Guillette said.

Florida ended January with 172,209 homes for sale, the highest level since Redfin began recording the data in 2012.

There are a number of possible reasons for slacking interest from buyers, in Florida and across the country.

In addition to elevated mortgage rates, there has also been a rise in costs associated with home ownership.

As home prices across the country have climbed, so too have property taxes. Property taxes for a single-family home jumped 5.1% from 2023 to 2024, according to CoreLogic.

But homeowners across Florida, Texas and Louisiana — states that are particularly vulnerable to intense, climate change-fueled hurricanes and floods — face an additional cost in the form of skyrocketing home insurance premiums.

In order to find interested buyers in recent months, some home sellers on Florida’s coasts have offered to help cover buyers’ closing costs and pay for their home repairs, Guillette said. “Sellers haven’t had to do that in years,” he added.

Steep demand persists in the Northeast

While buyers in states like Florida, Texas, and Louisiana may have plenty of options when shopping for a home this spring, intense competition hasn’t abated since the pandemic-era home demand rush in many cities concentrated in the country’s Northeast.

When Betsy Ambrose sold her home outside of Rochester, New York, in 2021, she expected to quickly find a new one with a shorter commute to her husband’s job. Instead, her family is still renting a temporary home four years later, waiting for a home to hit the market at a price point they can afford.

“We’ve been tremendously frustrated trying to wait out some kind of a course correction, or at least price drops of any kind,” Ambrose said. “They’re just not coming.”

“We finally started bidding on houses last year and we just can’t compete with the level of offers coming through,” she added.

Rochester had just one month of supply on the market in January, making it the city that most strongly favors home sellers of the 100 most populous metro areas in the US. Buffalo, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut, follow with just over a month of supply.

“I want to buy a house this year, but I just don’t see it being possible,” Ambrose said. “If I had known it would be this hard, I would have never sold my house. I had no idea what was in store for me.”