Delistings Jump 45%: Sellers Pull Homes Rather Than Cut Prices in Stubborn Market Standoff

Holdouts dig in as property listings vanish instead of dropping in value.

The Pullback Play

Sellers yank homes off the market at a 45% higher rate, refusing to budge on price. It's a strategic retreat, not a surrender—a bet that waiting out the current climate beats chasing a lower bid.

Market Mechanics on Mute

This isn't a crash; it's a freeze. Transaction volume plummets as both sides stare each other down. The usual market-clearing mechanism—price discovery—gets bypassed entirely. Sellers would rather sit on an illiquid asset than realize a loss, a sentiment any crypto hodler would recognize in a heartbeat.

The Waiting Game

The standoff creates a data vacuum. Official metrics go quiet, masking the true pressure building beneath the surface. It's a classic case of 'if I don't sell, the loss isn't real'—a philosophy that works until the tax bill or a new mortgage rate comes due.

This artificial scarcity props up headline numbers but does nothing for the guy who actually needs to move. It's financial theater, where the main act is everyone waiting for someone else to blink first. After all, in traditional finance, a paper loss is just a 'strategic holding period' until it isn't.

Key Takeaways

• Delistings are up 45% this year, according to a Realtor.com report, as more sellers pull their properties off the market rather than lower selling prices.
• The share of home sellers who cut their prices is up to 18%, up from pre-pandemic levels.
• While home listing prices have been flat since 2022, some areas are seeing price growth as buyers look for deals.

Home buyers are shying away from high home prices and elevated borrowing costs, and as a result, sellers are pulling their properties off the market at record rates, new data from Realtor.com showed.

Delisted homes for sale are up 45.5% so far this year through October, the highest rate in the three years that Realtor.com has tracked the data. For every 100 new listings that hit the marketin October, 27 were removed, showing an accelerating retreat of home sellers who aren’t willing to lower prices enough to find buyers. Delisting rates in real estate hotspots Miami, Denver and Houston were even higher. 

Why This is Important for the Economy

Home delistings signal growing pricing pressure in the housing market, which can slow home sales, curb construction activity, and weaken household wealth. When the housing market affordability, it can Ripple into financial markets, reduce job growth in housing-related industries, and ultimately weigh on overall economic momentum.

“The run-up [in delistings] began in June and has remained elevated for five straight months, with roughly 6% of active listings coming off the market each month—levels typically seen only during the slowest winter weeks,” the report said. “This  surge reflects a growing mismatch between buyer affordability and seller price expectations, with more homeowners choosing to step back rather than continue to market homes that aren’t attracting offers.”

Inventory Increasing As Sales Remain Sluggish

Other data in the Realtor.com monthly report showed that more homeowners are trying to sell their properties, even though home sales have been stagnant. Active listings rose for the 25th straight month in November as inventory remained NEAR mid-summer levels, even as the amount of sellers who cut prices rose to 18%, up by nearly 3 percentage points over pre-pandemic levels.

Existing-home sales have been near historic lows since they declined in 2022 after a historic run-up in home prices in the period around the COVID-19 pandemic. The Realtor.com data shows how home prices have stagnated during that period. The median home listing price of $415,000 in November is 36.1% higher than in November 2019, but it’s little changed from November 2022 levels.

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As a result, many homebuyers are looking in more affordable housing markets, which is driving home listing prices higher in these areas. The Realtor.com report showed that since 2022, home listing prices in Milwaukee are up 21% when measured by square footage, while home prices in Cleveland climbed 20.3% and 15.4% in Grand Rapids, Mich. Even so, home prices in these areas are still below the national average. 

"A number of sellers are retreating after listing if the market doesn’t meet their price expectations, while buyers are strategically redirecting to the metros that remain affordable,” said Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at Realtor.com. “These dynamics reflect how higher rates and years of rapid price growth have rewritten the rules of engagement for both buyers and sellers.”