If you have been thinking about selling your home, the timing is not in your favor. In plain terms, a buyer's market means there are more homes for sale than there are people looking to buy. That gives the person with the checkbook room to ask for a lower price, and it puts pressure on sellers to accept.
Fewer people are buying, and the reason comes down to affordability. Homes have become too expensive for a lot of people, and that has cut the number of buyers sharply. Even though there are more homes on the market, buyers are about 34% scarcer than sellers.
It has been more than a decade since buyer activity was this weak, and a 51% gap is large enough to change how homes get priced. When buyers have that much leverage, the asking price often becomes just a starting point.
Most of the 39 buyer's markets sit in the South, where the imbalance is biggest.
Miami is the strongest of them all, with sellers outnumbering buyers by 154%. Nashville, Tenn. comes next at 151%, followed by Houston at 130%, San Antonio at 116%, and Austin, Texas at 112%.
For buyers in these metros, the market is working in their favor. For sellers, it means competing against a lot of other people who also want to sell, and that often shows up in the final price.
A buyer's market does not mean prices are falling in every neighborhood. It means buyers have more choices and more room to negotiate.
Not every market has flipped. Six metro areas still favor sellers, and they are mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
Nassau County, N.Y. is the most seller-friendly, with the seller count running 36% below the buyer count. Newark, N.J. follows at 21%, Providence, R.I. at 17%, and Milwaukee at 15%.
New Brunswick, N.J. and Montgomery County, Pa. round out the list, both at 13%. These are the places where sellers still have the edge, even as most of the country moves the other way.
In these six metros, buyers outnumber sellers, which flips the dynamic. The seller gets to hold firmer on price, and the buyer has to work harder to make a deal.
Redfin's chief economist, Daryl Fairweather, says the market actually started to loosen up last year. "Mortgage rates were falling in July 2025, which helped bring more buyers into the market later in last year's homebuying season," she told The New York Post.
The falling rates in 2025 drew more buyers in, which shows how quickly the balance can shift. Housing markets are cyclical, and this one is no different.
For buyers, the current setup means more room to negotiate on price. For sellers, it means the days of listing a home and waiting for offers to pile up are mostly over, at least in the South.
The market is not stuck this way forever, but for now the power sits with the people holding the checkbook. If you are on the buying side, that is a good position to be in.
For most people, a home is the biggest purchase they will ever make. Knowing which side of the table you sit on matters a lot.