Real estate: A turning point for home prices?

All of a sudden, it’s a buyer’s market in residential real estate, said Samantha Delouya in CNN.com. Home sellers now outnumber buyers in the U.S. by nearly 500,000, “the largest gap between the two groups since Redfin began compiling the data in 2013.” It’s a stark reversal from the post-pandemic frenzy when sellers had buyers lining up and bidding up the few available properties. Now it’s the sellers who are looking anxiously for someone, anyone, to make an offer. The median price of an existing home still rose nationally by 1.8% in April to $414,000, the 22nd consecutive month of year-over-year price increases. However, major pockets of the country, especially in Florida and Texas, are seeing prices slashed this spring to lure prospects back into the market.

Some “fiercely competitive” areas, like the New York City suburbs, continue to see prices rising, said Ronda Kaysen in The New York Times, but properties there “that would have gotten a dozen offers a year ago now get two or three.” In the South and West, inventory is piling up, and “homes are sitting on the market for months.” Canceled sales—a seller’s biggest nightmare—also rose in April. “The extreme volatility” produced by President Trump’s tariff agenda “threw cold water on a fragile market” this spring, and “buyers bailed out.” That will continue as long as economic uncertainty remains. Buyers are relishing the newfound upper hand, said Catherine Reagor in The Arizona Republic. In the Phoenix area, more than 26,000 houses are currently idling unsold—and sellers are now the ones sweetening the deal. Real estate agents say one buyer “asked for the repainting of the interior of a house” before making an offer, while another “asked for a bathroom renovation.” Call it buyer’s revenge.