Is It a Seller’s Market? Here’s How To Tell and What It Means for You

After years of sky-high prices and bidding wars that kept sellers firmly in control, the national housing market is finally starting to loosen, according to a new report from Realtor.com®.

The new Market Clock from Realtor.com places the U.S. housing market at 3 o’clock: balanced overall, but gradually moving in a more buyer-friendly direction. The bigger shift, though, may be that the national market has split.

In December 2021, 98% of the top 50 metros were in seller-leaning phases. But today, that share has fallen to 26%, while 46% were balanced but loosening and 16% were in buyer’s-market territory.

It's a marked change for both buyers and sellers. As markets across the country move in different directions, understanding the signals—and knowing how to respond to them—has become more important than ever.

What is a seller’s market?

A seller’s market happens when there are more buyers than available homes for sale. This imbalance gives sellers the upper hand, often leading to faster sales, bidding wars, and higher prices.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because most of the country has been in a seller’s market since the early 2010s. After the 2008 financial crisis, new-home construction slowed dramatically and never fully caught up with demand, creating a long-standing shortage that still shapes the market today.

Then, during the early pandemic years, low mortgage rates brought a flood of new buyers into the market, worsening that imbalance and pushing much of the country into an extreme seller’s market.

Given how unusual those conditions were, it can be hard to put today's market shifts into context for the simple fact that many places no longer fit neatly into a simple seller’s-market or buyer’s-market binary.

That gray area is exactly what the Market Clock is designed to clarify. It places markets on a 12-hour clock face that runs from peak seller’s market at 12 o’clock to peak buyer’s market at 6 o’clock, with balanced conditions in between.

Just as important, it shows direction. A market at 3 o’clock may be balanced but moving toward buyers, while a market at 9 o’clock may also look balanced but be tightening back toward sellers.

What drives a seller's market?

At its core, whether a market favors sellers or buyers comes down to supply and demand. But in practice, that balance is shaped by a range of factors, like those explained below.

Low inventory

When there aren't enough homes for sale relative to all the buyers looking for one, sellers gain leverage.

The national housing market is currently short 4.03 million homes, and that gap has been a major driver of the listing shortage that has helped keep sellers in control for much of the past two decades.

Even so, buyers are starting to get a bit more breathing room here. Active listings rose 8.1% year over year in March, loosening seller's grip as buyers gained more choices.

That being said, inventory still remains down almost 14% compared to 2017 to 2019 levels, keeping sellers largely in charge.

Faster sales

When buyers compete for a limited number of homes, they rush to offer the best and fastest terms. As a result, properties spend fewer days on market (DOM), adding to seller power as buyers have less time to shop and negotiate.

That dynamic is still visible in some seller-friendly metros. Chicago, IL—which the Market Clock classifies as a peak seller’s market—saw days on market fall year-over-year in March even as the national trend moved the other way, according to data from Realtor.com.

At the national level, the typical home spent 57 days on the market in March, up four days from a year earlier, and time on market increased in 43 of the 50 largest metros—in a sign that many markets are becoming less frenzied, even if some still clearly favor sellers.

Higher prices

When sellers have the advantage, they usually have more power to hold firm on price or even sell above it.

While much of the pandemic era frenzy was marked by this kind of bidding war activity, that kind of leverage appears to be softening—at least at the national level, according to the March Monthly Housing Report from Realtor.com.

As many as 16% of active listings nationwide had a price cut. That was 1.2 percentage points lower than a year earlier, but still high enough to show that many sellers are having to adjust to softer conditions.

In metros that remain peak seller’s markets, however, price cuts are much less common. In Hartford, CT, just 4.7% of listings had a price cut in March. In Chicago, the share was 9.8%.

By contrast, price cuts were far more common in buyer-friendlier markets. In Tampa, FL, 25.9% of listings had a reduction, while in Phoenix, AZ the share was even higher, at 29.7%.

So, is it a seller’s market right now?

Nationally, not quite. The clearest takeaway from the new Market Clock research is that the housing market is no longer one story.

As many as 13 metros still clearly favor sellers, mostly concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast. Those include seller-leaning metros such as Boston, Columbus, and San Jose, along with markets even closer to peak seller conditions like Providence, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and San Francisco.

Meanwhile, many Southern markets are moving in the opposite direction. Atlanta, Austin, Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, and Riverside are already in early buyer territory, showing how uneven the market has become from one city to the next.

Local and regional variations

Whether it’s a seller’s market now depends much more on where you live than it did just a few years ago. But even in buyer-friendlier markets, sellers are still finding ways to assert their power.

In Atlanta, an early buyer's market, some sellers are still closing at lightning speed.

“My last listing went under contract in 16 days, and I'm working with a buyer whose home just went under contract in two days, so the Northeast Atlanta market is still moving quickly if the homes are properly priced, staged, and clean,” says Lisa Harris, associate at Re/Max Center.

It's an important distinction—even at the metro level, there can be local variations that tilt the market one way or the other. Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com, offers some advice.

“Locally, two good indicators are median days on market and the percent of listings with price cuts. If days on market is low, you’re likely to be in a seller’s market," he says. "If days on market is high and more and more sellers are cutting prices, that’s an indication buyers are gaining leverage.”

Since each market might have different historical trends and seasonality, Krimmel recommends using Realtor.com historical data to see where your market stands relative to itself in more normal pre-pandemic conditions.

The market is shifting, but the advantage isn’t gone

“Context matters,” Krimmel explains. “So what may feel like a sudden shift to a buyer’s market is really just a market that is slowly edging toward a balanced one. The market is becoming relatively less favorable to sellers, but it still is a seller’s market in an absolute sense. The national averages are just that—averages of local conditions.”

In other words, buyers might be gaining some ground, but sellers aren't without power. To understand what kind of market you’re dealing with, it’s essential to zoom in on your local trends.