09/23/2026
📈📉Home sellers are offering record concessions as housing market tips toward buyers
More buyers are scoring coveted concessions from sellers as the housing market continues to tip in their favor.
New data from real estate firm Redfin Corp. found that home sellers gave concessions to buyers in 44.7% of U.S. home sales in August, a jump from 42.6% the same time last year and the highest August total since at least 2020.
Redfin defines a concession as an item or amenity that helps reduce the buyer's total cost of purchasing the home, such as additional money toward repairs or closing costs — but it does not include back-and-forth negotiations that forced a seller to lower their price. That said, Redfin found that 15.8% of homes sold in August entailed a price drop in addition to a concession, up from 15.6% in August 2025 and another peak since 2020.
The surge in concessions showcases the return to a buyer's market, as climbing mortgage rates and home sale prices have translated into fewer buyers even as inventory on the market continues to grow.
“Buyers know they can be picky. They’re asking for every concession under the sun,” said Amanda Peterson, a Redfin Premier agent in Dallas. “That’s especially true for newly built homes. Builders are offering $10,000 or $20,000 in concessions, buying down mortgage rates and throwing in appliances.”
She said she saw clients walk away from a potential home sale because the pantry was too small and they didn’t like the laundry room, even though the sellers offered to alter the floor plan.
“There are so many homes for sale that buyers are holding out for one that checks every box,” Peterson said.
Sun Belt cities dominated the list of markets with the highest rates of concessions in August, with Atlanta boasting 72.8% of deals that included concessions. Charlotte, North Carolina, saw 67.9% of deals include concessions, followed by Phoenix at 67.4%, Las Vegas at 66.7% and Raleigh, North Carolina, at 66.3%.
Those higher rates are partly due to scores of pandemic-inspired relocations to those markets, spurring homebuilders to rapidly build new homes to meet demand and, ultimately, leading to a glut of housing when inbound relocations slowed, Redfin said.
July, sellers outnumbered buyers by 51%, per an earlier Redfin report — 1.46 million sellers compared to 967,000 buyers, a record low since the company began tracking that data in 2013. Typically, Redfin defines a city as being a "buyer's market" if it has just 10% more sellers than buyers. Using its latest data, nearly 80% of cities meet that threshold of being a "buyer's market."
The shifts in the market have led total closed home sales to drop to their lowest level in nearly two years, while the median home sale price rose in July to $407,730 and the monthly average mortgage rate increased to a one-year high of 6.54%, according to Redfin.
The changing dynamics haven't affected every portion of the housing market equally.
At the upper end of the market, luxury homes are still seeing strong interest, driving up the median sale price for those homes by 4.7% for the three months ending May 31, compared with the same period in 2025, according to Redfin data. ***As well, the typical “starter home” is getting increasingly expensive. A Zillow analysis, which defined a starter home as being among the lowest-third in home value in a given city, found 242 cities that boast a starter-home value topping $1 million, up from 226 cities in 2025 and just 80 cities in February 2020 — before the pandemic sent housing prices skyrocketing.***
The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, the federal bipartisan measure that became law in July, also stands to impact the housing market. It contains programs meant to combat overall housing supply shortages and high prices.
The most noteworthy measure is that it restricts large institutional investors from acquiring single-family homes. Specifically, it limits investors who directly or indirectly own at least 350 homes from acquiring single-family homes, with some exceptions.
