Late fall tends to be the time when the most homes go on the market, and sellers who haven’t sold so far don’t want to wait until winter, when the economy is at its worst. However, a new report from Realtor.com shows that delistings in October were reported with a one-month lag, increasing 45.5% since the beginning of the year and nearly 38% from October 2024.
The report calls this an “unusually high rate” as this is the best year for delistings since Realtor.com began tracking in 2022. Delistings began to increase in June and have continued to rise for five consecutive months. Approximately 6% of active listed stocks leave the market each month, and this is typically only seen in the dead of winter.
Additionally, more potential buyers are turning to what Realtor.com calls the “refuge market.” These are areas where home prices are much more affordable and did not see price increases during the first few years of the pandemic.
“The rise in delistings and growth in the evacuation market captures the push and pull that characterizes today’s housing market,” Daniel Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said in a release. “These developments reflect how rising interest rates and years of rapid price increases have rewritten the rules of trade for both buyers and sellers.”
Hale expects the market to gradually improve next year, with lower mortgage rates and more stable supply likely to lead to an increasingly balanced buyer-seller market.
Some of the cities that have seen the highest price increases over the past five years now have the highest percentages of dissatisfied sellers. Miami, Denver, and Houston had the highest percentage of delisted homes compared to newly listed homes.
According to Realtor.com, the national median list price in November was 0.4% lower than in November 2024. However, it was still 36% higher than in November 2019, before the pandemic. The number of new listings increased only 1.7% from the previous year.
Price increases have been more pronounced in evacuation markets, with prices rising 5.5% year-over-year in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and 5% in St. Louis. Cleveland, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh round out the strongest evacuation markets, according to the report. Prices in these markets are still 20% to 30% below the national median.
Another worrying trend this fall is contract cancellations. About 15% of home purchase contracts were canceled in October, up from 14% a year earlier, according to Redfin. Cancellations are now well above pre-pandemic levels.
Regionally, San Antonio had the most canceled transactions, with more than one in five (21%) pending home sales falling through in October. It was followed by Fort Lauderdale, Florida (20%), Fort Worth, Texas (19.7%), Las Vegas (19.2%) and Jacksonville, Florida (19.2%).
The report cited high housing costs and economic uncertainty.
