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Zillow Research

Where to Hunt for Bargain Homes on Black Friday

This Thanksgiving, after the feast is over, forget the crowds looking for cheap knick-knacks at the mall and go bargain-hunting for something that really matters: Your next home.

Home values have grown year-over-year for 27 straight months, but after reaching its post-recession peak in April at 8.3 percent, the annual pace of appreciation has fallen in every month since and stands at 6.4 percent as of October. This slowdown in appreciation is largely driven by more for-sale inventory coming online in recent months. Overall inventory grew by 15.8 percent year-over-year in October (seasonally adjusted), the 12th straight month of inventory gains.

And as more inventory hits the market, more sellers are feeling the competitive pressure. As a result, more sellers are cutting their prices, and not just by a token amount. Roughly 37.4 percent of all U.S. listings on Zillow had at least one price cut in October, up from 34 percent at the same time last year. The median price cut nationwide was about 5.4 percent in October, or more than $9,500 based on the October median home value of $177,500.

So, just in time for Black Friday, buyers are finding more bargains out there. But where can buyers expect to have the most negotiating power?

Among the 100 largest cities nationwide, the city with the most price cuts in October was Albuquerque, New Mexico, with more than half (54 percent) of all listings having a price reduction. Detroit, meanwhile, offers the biggest overall discounts for home shoppers. Home prices in the Motor City were slashed by an average of 24 percent off the original listing price, more than twice as much as the next city on the list (Cleveland, at 11.1 percent).

Of course, in this season of bargain shopping, the best bargain hunters know never to pay the sticker price—even if it has been reduced. The sale-to-list-price ratio (SLP) represents the percentage difference between the price that was actually paid for the home and its final listing price. Nationally, the SLP ratio in October was 0.98. In other words, buyers could typically expect to pay about 2 percent below the final asking price once they sat down at the closing table (a ratio of 1 would mean buyers paid exactly the asking price, and a ratio above 1 would mean a buyer was paying above the asking price).

The city with the lowest SLP ratio in October—the place where bold buyers and their skilled agent-negotiators can really talk down an asking price—was Cleveland, at 0.94. With a median listing price of $59,900, that represents a discount at the negotiating table of almost $3,500 in the Rock and Roll Capital of the World.

And one final note—it can sometimes be as important to know where NOT to look for bargains as where to look. The city with the least amount of listings with a price cut in October was San Francisco, where just 16.9 percent of listings have had a price reduction. The city with the smallest cuts in listing prices was Chandler, Arizona, with a median price cut of just 3.7 percent. And the city where buyers have the least negotiating power once they’re at the closing table? San Francisco again, with a SLP ratio of almost 1.1, meaning buyers there should expect to pay 10 percent above the seller’s asking price.

Looking for bargains in your neck of the woods? See how your local market stacks up using the interactive table below.

Where to Hunt for Bargain Homes on Black Friday