Nearly half as many items are taken off the market because sellers are so frustrated that they can’t get their price.

More people are taking their homes off the market because they couldn’t find a buyer at the price they thought they were worth.

According to the latest monthly housing trends report from the Realtor.com® economic research team, the number of homes that were taken off the market rose 47% across the country in May compared to the same month last year. This shows that buyers would rather wait than negotiate. Delistings are 35% higher so far this year than they were at the same time last year.

Part of the rise is due to the fact that active inventory grew overall, by 28% from June of last year to June of this year. The number of new homes for sale went up 8.8% from a year ago, but it has stayed the same for the past two months.

Still, more homes are being taken off the market than are being listed. In May, 13 homes were taken off the market for every 100 homes that were listed. This is up from 10 in the spring of 2024 and 2023 and only six in 2022.

There were a lot of price cuts after the number of delistings because some sellers had high price expectations and the market wasn’t selling as much as they thought it would. Now, it looks like some sellers would rather wait for the market to cool down than take less money for their house.

“Unlike past housing cycles where falling prices pressured underwater homeowners to sell, today’s homeowners benefit from record-high levels of home equity, so they have the flexibility to wait it out,” says Realtor.com economist Jake Krimmel. “This allows many sellers to withdraw their homes from the market if their asking price isn’t met.”

The trend is most clear in the South and West, where overstock has returned to levels seen before the pandemic and prices have stayed the same or gone down.

Phoenix had the most homes taken off the market in May, with 30 taken off the market for every new home posted. (Delisting data is released one month after the fact so that it can be checked to see if a home was actually sold or just taken off the market.)

“With median list prices essentially unchanged over the past two years, it’s clear that many sellers remain anchored to peak-era expectations,” he says. “While the market may be becoming more buyer-friendly, sellers still hold a trump card: delist the home and fish for that high asking price at a later date.”

Phoenix also has the most price cuts, with 34% of all items there having a price cut in June. Austin, TX, and Denver came in close behind with price-lowered shares.

In June, prices were lowered on 20.6% of homes for sale across the country, which is 2.2% more than the same month last year. Since at least 2016, this is the most shares that Realtor.com has seen in June.

That’s why the national median list price stayed the same at $440,950 last month, up 0.1% from the same time last year. This shows that many buyers are still hoping to get prices from the peak.

Baltimore (+6.8%), Virginia Beach, VA (+5.8%), and Grand Rapids, MI (+5%) had the biggest year-over-year price rises among big cities.

Cincinnati (-5%), Sacramento, CA (-4.8%), and Miami (-4.7%) had the biggest drops in market prices from one year to the next.

CEO of Realtor.com Danielle Hale says, “This year’s market is a study in contrast.” “Buyers have more options than they have in years, but many sellers are deciding to back off if they don’t get their number because they expect prices to reach their all-time highs and have strong equity positions to back them up.”

“Looking forward, this dynamic will affect whether we tip from a balanced to buyer’s market, and if so, how quickly that happens,” she says.

Inventory hits a new high after the pandemic
Buyers still have more homes to choose from than at any other time since the COVID-19 outbreak, even though more homeowners have taken their homes off the market.

For the second month in a row, the number of live listings in the United States topped 1 million in June. This is about 13% less than what it was before the pandemic, but the difference is slowly closing.

Stock went up in all four big U.S. regions in June. In the West, it went up 38%, and in the South, it went up almost 30%.

Twelve months ago, there were more active listings in all fifty major cities. Las Vegas (+77.6%) and Washington, DC (+63.6%) had the most active listings.

Also, homes are staying on the market longer. The typical number of days a home was on the market rose to 53, which is five days longer than a year ago and the same number of days as before the pandemic.