With Black Friday coming up, shoppers of all kinds have their eyes peeled for great deals – including home shoppers. While the housing market rebalances, home shoppers who are able to afford today’s market may be wondering when the best time is to look for a discount on their dream home. As the share of listings with a price cut reaches new heights, now may be the best time to find that deal on a house you love.
With Black Friday coming up, shoppers of all kinds have their eyes peeled for great deals – including home shoppers. While the housing market rebalances, home shoppers who are able to afford today’s market may be wondering when the best time is to look for a discount on their dream home. As the share of listings with a price cut reaches new heights, now may be the best time to find that deal on a house you love.
The best time to catch a home slashing its list price is right after hump day. More sellers (18.5%) cut prices on a Thursday than any other day of the week; that’s the same day more homes are coming onto the market and catching the eyes of potential buyers. However, it’s only slightly higher than the other core days of the work week, so if you see a listing cut its price on a Monday, don’t risk missing out on a great home by waiting a few more days.
What you can be sure of is seeing fewer price cuts on Fridays and the weekends, when home buyers are out shopping the deals that came through during the week. Less than 14% of price cuts happened on Fridays, and less than 10% on Saturdays and Sundays each.
The best days for deals depend on the market. Price cuts are most common on Tuesdays in Philadelphia and Baltimore, and Mondays in Miami, Detroit and Cleveland. None of the top 50 markets see the highest share of price cuts on Friday through Sunday though, as sellers and buyers are busy with open houses and weekend relaxation.
Unfortunately, home shoppers have missed the window this year for the season with the most price cuts. Typically, the share of listings with a price cut is highest from the beginning of July to the middle of September. For homes that linger around after October, it becomes less likely that they’ll cut prices. Of the top 50 markets, Milwaukee has the latest week where the share of listings with a price cut is highest, and that occurs in the first week of October.
In Florida, the best time for price cuts is at the beginning of the year: In both Miami and Tampa, the share of listings with a price cut is highest after the new year.
The typical listing with a price cut saw between a 2.6 and 3.8% price reduction from 2018 to this year, but given how much homes have appreciated in the last few years, that now amounts to a double digit discount – nearly $11,000.
Home shoppers in Buffalo can snag the biggest bargains, where the typical price cut was 4.6% in September 2022, $11,291 off the original list price. Pittsburgh and Cleveland were close behind with a typical price cut of 4.2% and 4.0% respectively. Shoppers in Phoenix are going to see smaller reductions, where the typical price cut was 2.3% – but now that prices have risen roughly 43% from 2019, that 2.3% carries a larger punch. Close behind are Jacksonville and Denver with a typical price cut of 2.4%.
If a seller is going to cut their list price, it typically happens a month after listing. That’s true for the bulk of the year outside of the winter months, which is when the housing market typically slows down. At that point, homes will have been listed for roughly seven weeks before seeing a price cut. Because the pace of the market increased during the pandemic, current buyers can expect to see a seller cut their prices after about three weeks on the market.
Metros like Salt Lake City had a fast market even before the pandemic and that’s still the case: The typical time to first price cut was roughly two weeks in mid-October 2019, and is still around that level. Meanwhile, Miami is known to have slower market speeds despite rapid price appreciation. In mid-October 2019, the typical home was listed for 34 days before getting a price cut. That time is down to 30 days this year.
With the mortgage rate-fueled rebalancing of the housing market, home shoppers this year are seeing a higher-than-usual share of listings with a price cut, and larger discounts in dollar terms. Frenzied market speeds home shoppers may associate with the pandemic seem to be slowing down, which is more good news for buyers. However, as new listings fail to enter the market at their usual pace, this year’s buyers could feel as though there are fewer fresh options to choose from each week.
