Open houses, closed wallets

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Published Date 6/16/2025

It’s like having a party, but no one shows up. After what seems like an eternity of sparse listings, the inventory of homes for sale is finally rising, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Nicole Friedman. But buyers aren’t interested.

A Redfin analysis reveals the U.S. housing market had nearly a half million more sellers than buyers in April, the biggest such gap on record in seasonally adjusted data going back to 2013, The upshot of all this? It’s finally a buyer’s market after years of frustration with fast-rising prices and bidding wars. In many parts of the U.S., sellers are cutting prices or offering concessions such as paying for buyers’ closing costs.

“A historic shortage of homes for sale is a big reason why the housing market has been stuck near its slowest sales pace in three decades,” says Friedman, who sums it up by reasoning that buyers were frustrated with a lack of options, and desirable homes often sparked bidding wars.

For so many reasons, supply is rising. Some sellers are finally experiencing life events that force them to move, like a job relocation or having a baby, while others are unloading investment properties because their costs are rising or they’re worried that home prices will fall and want to sell before that happens, says many Realtors.

But all these new listings haven’t been enough to wake up the housing market. Existing-home sales in April fell for the second consecutive month, resulting in the slowest sales pace since April of 2009. Simply put, buyers are still priced out, with home prices up more than 50% in the last five years and mortgage rates staying stagnant at a rate that just won’t work for them. Throw a dose of economic uncertainty on top of that pile of issues and major purchases are discouraging even the most earnest of buyers.

“The mismatch between buyers and sellers is a sign that home prices could decline slightly on a national basis later this year,” reports Redfin’s Chen Zhao. “It doesn’t feel like buyer demand is going to come back that much. Prices are just too high.”

Friedman reports that while active listings are still about 14% below typical pre pandemic levels, they rose in May to the highest level since 2019 according to Realtor.com, which is operated by News Corp, which is the parent company of the WSJ.

The Southeast and Southwest represent the biggest buyers’ markets, with the inventory of homes for sale hovering above prepandemic levels. But the Miami metro area had almost three times as many sellers as buyers in April, Redfin said.

Some markets in the Northeast and Midwest still have more buyers than sellers, however, with Newark, N.J., leaning the most in sellers’ favor, according to Redfin. Home shoppers in many of those markets are still facing competition for properties.

As for homebuilders, activity in the U.S. plummeted from 2006 to 2009 and took years to recover, leaving the market undersupplied just when millennials began looking to buy homes. Then they were hit in the face with mortgage rates surging in 2022 — translating into home sellers staying put after having refinanced their homes back during the pandemic. All dressed up and no place to go.

Some homeowners who bought their first homes in 2020 or 2021 now have children and need to upgrade, said Denver-based agent Elle Pappas, who admits that when she once helped clients strategize about how to win bidding wars, they’re now holding out for a deal.

WSJ,TBWS

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