🏠 46% of Home Sales Had Concessions. Here's the Full Playbook.

GROW WITH LIBERTAS & EXP REALTY

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The housing market isn't crashing. It isn't booming either. It's negotiating. Redfin just reported that 46% of home sales in May 2026 included seller concessions — the highest May percentage on record. Bigger Pockets is tracking that buyers who successfully negotiate concessions are receiving around 5% of the purchase price in credits, buy-downs, repairs, and other incentives.

Housing Wire's tracker shows inventory rising and buyers gaining meaningful leverage. Which means the entire game has shifted for agents on both sides of the transaction.

Old-school negotiation was simple. Buyer wanted a lower price. Agent tried to get it. Seller pushed back. Done. That single-variable game doesn't fit the current market. Today we walk through the six types of concessions every agent needs to know cold, the strict rules on how much you can ask for by loan type, the listing-agent phone call that costs nothing and wins deals, and the psychological reframe that lets you save your buyer $500/month without your seller feeling like they lost.

The most important shift is at the top of your thinking. The best price on a house isn't the one in the contract. It's the price after the concessions are taken into consideration. Every conversation flows from that reframe.

Before the six types, here's the critical insight most agents haven't fully absorbed.

If you position yourself to a buyer as the agent who's going to beat the seller up on price — a $10,000 or $15,000 price reduction, say — you might actually win that negotiation. But you'll also almost certainly lose the concession negotiation that would have been dramatically more valuable to your buyer.

The seller who just took a $15,000 price cut is done negotiating. When the inspection comes back and the buyer asks for repairs, credits, or a rate buy-down — the seller says no. You already got your price reduction. The agent who "won" on price left five times that value on the table in concessions.

Meanwhile, an agent who came in at full asking price and asked for 6% in seller concessions may have created dramatically more value for the buyer. On a $500,000 home, 6% is $30,000 — which, deployed as a permanent rate buy-down, might drop the buyer's payment by $400-$500 per month for the life of the loan. That's tens of thousands in payment savings over the hold period, all while the seller feels like they got their price.

Your negotiation strategy is not just about the price line. It's about the entire structure of the transaction.

The most traditional concession is the one every agent already knows. Seller lists at $500,000, accepts $485,000. That's a concession.

But a modest price reduction usually only modestly reduces the buyer's monthly payment. $15,000 off the top of a $500,000 purchase saves maybe $75-$90/month at current rates. Compare that to what the same $15,000 could produce as a rate buy-down and the price reduction often loses the comparison.

Start thinking about the entire transaction, not just the price line.

Instead of (or in addition to) a small price nudge, the seller contributes toward the buyer's allowable closing costs.

This is often more valuable to buyers than a price reduction of the same amount because it reduces their cash to close. Buyers usually run out of cash before they run out of qualifying income. A first-time buyer who scraped together the down payment often panics when they see the Truth-in-Lending statement and realize closing costs, prepaid taxes, and reserves add another $10,000-$15,000 they hadn't planned for. Then the inspection comes back and they see repair costs on top of that. Suddenly the deal that felt affordable feels impossible.

Closing cost credits solve the cash-flow anxiety that kills more deals than agents realize.

Here's a caution specifically for the listing side. Some buyer agents will bring you an offer at full asking price — sometimes even over — with the explicit plan to hammer for aggressive concessions at inspection. This is called the secondary negotiation.

The game: take the house off the market, get the seller emotionally and legally committed, run off competing buyers, and then use the inspection as leverage to extract dramatic concessions the seller wouldn't have accepted upfront.

We're not condoning this practice — but you need to know it happens. The counter-move on the listing side is straightforward: get every listing pre-inspected before it hits the market. Own the inspection findings. Disclose them. Handle them proactively. When the buyer's inspection comes back with a laundry list of "surprises," you can respond calmly with your own documentation. We'll do a full podcast on pre-inspection strategy soon — for now, know that going into contract without one is a structural weakness in this market.

Post-inspection, the seller has several possible responses:

Every one of these is a concession. Every one produces slightly different tax, timing, and cash-flow outcomes for the parties involved.

Premier Coaching includes a "What to Expect From Your Inspection" document for both sides — one for buyers, one for sellers. It's a preemptive framing tool that turns the post-inspection conversation from a confrontational grocery-list negotiation into a professional, structured discussion of specific items and standard responses. Agents who deploy this tool see dramatically fewer inspection-related deal blowups.

Tactical note: if you came in strong with an aggressive price reduction upfront, you're much less likely to get inspection concessions on the back end. If you paid full list price, you're much more likely to get the seller to work with you on inspection items. This is another reason the reframe of "price is the last variable to negotiate" often serves your buyer better.

Now the technical piece every agent needs to memorize — or at minimum, know how to look up quickly.

Seller concessions toward buyer financing (closing costs, points, prepaids) are capped by loan type and by down payment. These rules exist to prevent inflated purchase prices that would distort the appraisal and lending process.

Here's the working framework:

Conventional, owner-occupied:

Investment properties (conventional):

FHA: 6% max in seller concessions toward buyer costs.

USDA: 6% max.

VA: Seller may pay all normal allowable closing costs, plus up to 4% in additional concessions.

Important — these percentages are of the purchase price, not the loan amount.

Let's work through it. Buyer purchasing a $500,000 house. Putting 30% down — $150,000. Loan amount $350,000.

Under conventional guidelines with 30% down, the seller can contribute up to 9% of the purchase price in financing concessions. That's $45,000.

Traditional negotiation move: negotiate the seller down from $500,000 to $450,000. Buyer saves $50,000 on price, drops their payment by roughly $300/month.

Alternative move: pay $500,000 (full asking), ask for $45,000 in seller concessions. Deploy that $45,000 as a permanent rate buy-down. The buyer's rate might drop from 6.55% to 4.55% or lower. Payment drops by $500-$700/month — dramatically more than the price-reduction path produced.

The seller sold at full asking price. Their listing looks stronger. They preserve face and their sense of the market value. Everyone wins.

The buyer got a lower payment than the price reduction would have produced. With payments as the primary decision variable for most buyers, this move often unlocks deals that pure price negotiation could not.

You don't have to memorize every concession limit for every loan product. Just ask your lender at the start of every transaction: what's the maximum allowable seller concession on this loan? Then structure accordingly.

This is the tactical extension of concession #4 — the specific move most agents underuse.

The seller's concession dollars can be deployed as points on the buyer's mortgage — permanently buying down the interest rate for the life of the loan. Or they can be structured as a temporary 2-1 buy-down that saves the buyer $500+/month in year one, with a step-up back to the market rate over the following two years.

Either way, the seller's money is doing more work than a straight price reduction of the same amount, because the payment reduction compounds over the life of the loan.

Critical note on lenders. Not all mortgage professionals are equally versed in the full toolkit. Some default reflexively to the standard 30-year fixed with conventional 20% down — because that's what they know how to originate. That default costs your buyer serious money.

Find a lender who knows:

VA has some of the most flexible programs in the market. FHA has several specialty overlays. USDA is a goldmine in rural and semi-rural areas that most urban lenders never mention. If your lender's answer to every buyer is "here's your 30-year fixed conventional," you have the wrong lender. Find a better one.

This is the concession category most agents skip entirely — and it's often the single most powerful negotiating lever available in the current market. Because it costs the seller no money.

Here's the pro tip that separates professionals from amateurs. Before you submit any buyer offer, call the listing agent and ask: what's the ideal closing and possession date for your seller?

If you haven't been in the business long enough, this move will feel foreign. But it consistently works. Sellers will often accept a lower-priced offer, or an offer with more concessions, from a buyer who accommodates the seller's specific timing needs.

Real examples we hear on coaching calls constantly:

If you can accommodate any of these situations in your offer terms, you move to the top of the seller's consideration pile — often ahead of higher-priced or better-financed competing offers.

Sometimes you'll call the listing agent and they'll act like you're asking for the keys to Fort Knox. "Oh, you have to submit the offer and then we'll find out." That's an inexperienced listing agent who hasn't done the pre-work.

Redirect gently: "Listen — I want to make this as easy for your sellers as possible. What do you think there? Would it be helpful if you asked them so we could structure the offer around their timeline?"

Often the listing agent will realize they hadn't asked and go check. When they come back with the answer, you build the offer around the seller's actual needs. That very small thing might be the difference between winning the house and losing it.

Beyond closing and possession timing, here are other contract concessions that trade timing and certainty for buyer accommodation — many of them costing the seller nothing:

These concessions solve timing and certainty problems, not just money problems. And they open dramatically more of the negotiation surface than agents who only bring price to the table.

Here's the reframe conversation to have with every buyer who's fixated on price.

Buyer:

You:

Nine times out of ten, the actual answer is the payment. The buyer thinks the house is worth what it's asking. They just can't fit the payment into their budget as it's currently structured.

Once you've surfaced that:

That conversation, delivered confidently with the math in front of you, closes deals that would otherwise fall apart at the price obsession stage.

Knowledge equals confidence. Ignorance equals fear. Buyers can tell the difference in about 90 seconds.

Here's the strategic angle worth naming. A significant number of agents in your market only know how to negotiate on price. It's the only arrow in their quiver. They're losing deals every week because their buyer clients — who would have said yes to a structured concession package — instead walk away from properties they could have owned.

Meanwhile, the agents who've absorbed the full concession playbook are quietly stacking wins. They're the ones getting the calls. They're the ones getting the referrals. They're the ones with growing pipelines while the price-only agents wonder why the market isn't working.

The barrier isn't skill. It's information. Which means the moment you actually memorize the six concession categories, know the loan-type limits, and start making the pre-offer listing-agent calls, you jump to the top of the negotiating professionalism in most markets within a single week.

Four concrete moves:

One — memorize the concession limits by loan type. Print the framework above. Keep it in your phone. Reference it on every offer. Ask your lender at the start of every transaction what the max concession is.

Two — make the pre-offer listing-agent call on every buyer offer. What's your seller's ideal closing and possession date? Every time. No exceptions.

Three — reframe every price-obsessed buyer conversation using the payment-vs-price dialogue above.

Four — get pre-inspections done on every listing you take, before it hits the market. Preempt the secondary-negotiation game.

The housing market is negotiating. Not crashing. Not booming. Negotiating.

46% of May sales included concessions. Buyers are getting 5% of purchase price in value on average. Inventory is rising. Sellers are motivated but not desperate. This is exactly the environment that rewards agents who understand how to structure a transaction across multiple variables — not just the one variable most amateurs bring to the table.

Six concession categories. Concrete rules by loan type. The listing-agent pre-offer phone call. The buyer-psychology reframe. The Premier Coaching inspection documents. The lender who knows the full toolkit.

Wednesday's episode dives deeper into the strategic combinations — how to stack these concessions for maximum effect, when to lead with which category, and how to structure aggressive requests without blowing up deals. Today's mission is to make sure the whole toolkit is on your workbench. Wednesday we teach the chess moves.

For now — go rewire how you think about negotiation. The best price on the house isn't the one in the contract. It's the one after all the concessions are structured intelligently.

Do the work. Win the deals your competitors are losing on price alone.

Ready to stop guessing and start producing?

💼 Build wealth with Tim's eXp team: whylibertas.com/harris
📲 Elite Coaching — text Tim directly: 512-758-0206

If you structured every buyer offer around the full six-concession framework — pre-offer listing-agent call, right loan-type limits, rate buy-down deployment, and creative contract terms — how many deals do you think you'd win over the next 90 days that your price-only competitors would lose?

— Tim & Julie Harris

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