📍 Is It Really a Buyer's Market? The 2026 Local Answer

GROW WITH LIBERTAS & EXP REALTY

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Everybody's shouting the same headline right now: it's a buyer's market. Here's the thing — nationally, that's basically true. But if you take that national headline and walk it into a listing appointment, you're going to sound like every talking head on TV instead of the local expert your client actually needs.

Today we do two things. First, we walk through the five big shifts in residential real estate right now with the actual numbers. Second — and this is the piece to really land — we show you how to figure out whether your market and your micro-markets are actually a buyer's, seller's, or balanced market.

Because the answer is almost never the whole country. The answer is in your zip code, your price band, and your property type.

Let's get into it.

The single most important number in this whole conversation is months of supply. When the market's hot, nobody talks about this — but in the current environment, memorize it.

Months of supply asks: at the current pace of sales in your market, how long would it take to sell every home currently for sale if nothing new came on the market?

The industry rule of thumb:

Redfin, NAR, Realtor.com — they all reference roughly the same thresholds. This is the framework you use to answer the question every seller and every buyer has right now: what kind of market am I actually in?

To be clear, the national picture has shifted. Some specific numbers to carry into every client conversation:

But — and this is the critical piece — the national picture is the average of thousands of wildly different local pictures. Nationally, the country is in a buyer's market. Your specific market may or may not be. We'll get to how to figure that out below.

Before we go further — one specific tool worth putting in every client conversation right now. The Cost of Waiting interactive on Harris Real Estate Daily (link in the Interactives tab at the top of the newsletter) lets your buyer plug in purchase price, interest rate, expected wait time, and other variables to see exactly what waiting for the market to feel right is actually costing them.

Because here's the truth almost nobody's talking about right now. Homes are still appreciating. In most markets, prices are still climbing 3-4% annually. On an average $415,000 home, that's $12,000-$20,000 of appreciation in a single year. A buyer who waits 2-3 years to see if rates fall is looking at $40,000-$60,000 of missed appreciation before you even get to opportunity cost, foregone equity, and continued rent payments.

Waiting rarely makes financial sense — even with rates in the 6s or 7s. The Cost of Waiting interactive proves it out with the specific numbers for their exact scenario. Send the link. Let the math do the persuading.

Here's the reframe that changes the entire waiting-for-rates conversation. In most markets, we don't actually have an inventory problem. We don't have an interest rate problem. We don't have a house price problem.

We have a payment problem.

If monthly payments were to drop where buyers could more easily afford them, none of the other factors would matter that much. The frustration around "it's too expensive" is really frustration around "the payment doesn't work." Which is why buy-downs, ARMs, seller concessions, creative financing, and assumable mortgages have become such powerful tools — they attack the actual constraint directly.

Beyond rates, mortgage payments carry a lot of other costs — PMI, taxes, insurance, various fees baked into loan structures. Some of these are quietly getting attention from lenders and policymakers as pressure builds to make housing more accessible. Even if rates can't fall dramatically, payments can still fall through structural changes to what's baked into them.

The agent who understands this — and can explain it to their buyers using clear examples and tools like the Cost of Waiting interactive — is the agent whose buyers actually transact. The agent who defaults to "we just have to wait for rates" is the agent whose buyers walk to someone else.

Now the tactical data on what's happening between buyers and sellers who are transacting. Sellers are giving concessions at record rates.

The full concession playbook (six categories, loan-type limits, package structuring, negotiation strategy) is in the concession series we published last week — worth revisiting if you missed it.

Price cuts have hit levels not seen since the pandemic-era distortions.

Which produces the specific listing-side takeaway: overpricing used to be a low-risk game. Let's test a high number and we can always come down. During the pandemic, sellers routinely got away with pricing above their last best comp. Those days are over.

If you list overpriced today, you have two outcomes: your seller fires you, or your listing expires. That's why our Premier Coaching rule for clients is simple — you're not allowed to have any expireds. You're only allowed to list other agents' expireds.

Here's the specific script that lets you take a listing even when the seller wants to price higher than the market supports — without setting yourself up to lose the listing when you eventually need to reposition.

Then write it down. In writing. Signed acknowledgment.

That approach does five things at once:

One important honesty point. When you write that script, you're not manipulating the seller. You could actually be wrong. Your CMA is not gospel. Market conditions shift daily. Something new could hit the market next Tuesday that changes the comparable set. A major employer could announce an expansion five miles from the listing that shifts the entire neighborhood's price band.

Real estate is not an exact science. We try to make it one. It isn't. Which is why the two-weeks-or-10-showings framework is fair to the seller and to you — it's built to correct for information you don't have at the moment of the listing agreement.

Related warning for competitive listing appointments. Some agents will try to buy the listing by simply agreeing with the seller's inflated price. The seller loves being told their house is worth more. The inexperienced agent takes the overpriced listing and either fails to sell it (predictable) or lucks into a sale at a lower price after 90 days of frustration.

If you're the professional up against that agent, and you refuse to overprice, you'll lose the listing to the agent who did.

Which is why the two-weeks-or-10-showings script exists. You can list slightly above where the market probably supports, take the listing, and set the honest repositioning trigger in advance. You don't have to be the low-price agent to win. You have to be the honest and professional agent who took the listing and can now sell it.

And once you have the listing, the goal is to have the listing when it sells. Whether you overpriced by 5% or you were exactly right — if you're the agent on the ticket at closing, you're the winner. Tim and Julie were often the third listing agent on a property when they were selling actively. Fresh photos, fresh description, fresh price, fresh days-on-market — and the house would sell.

Now the piece that matters most for how you actually operate today. Every stat in this newsletter is a national average. Your specific market varies wildly from these averages.

Concessions by city, for context on how much variation exists:

Same data. Same measurement window. Same country. Wildly different local realities.

Price adjustments by city, same story:

If you walked into a San Francisco listing appointment and said "you should expect to reduce the price because that's what the market's doing," you'd be wrong on the data. If you walked into a San Antonio listing appointment and said "we won't need to consider a reduction — the market's holding," you'd be wrong the other direction. The national headline is useless without the local translation.

Now go one layer deeper. Even within a single neighborhood, micro-markets vary dramatically.

Real example from Tim and Julie's active-agent years. Certain streets in Clintonville and Beechwold in Columbus were always hot — six streets everyone wanted to live on, close to the park, cute, well-kept homes. Even during broader buyer's-market conditions, those streets sold quickly at solid prices. Every other street around them had different economics.

Or the street where one side has a hidden gas pipe easement, or freeway noise, or backs up to commercial property. The homes on the less desirable side of the street are structurally worth less than the more desirable side — but the visiting agent from another neighborhood, using national comps and matching square footage, is going to overprice the less-desirable side by 3-8%.

And the seller will know they're overpricing — because the seller has lived on that street. They'll politely thank you for coming, list with a different agent, and your appointment will end without a signature.

Micro-market knowledge is the differentiator no AI can replicate. AI can pull comps. AI can generate a CMA. AI can produce a listing description. AI cannot know that the east side of Elm Street backs up to a gas easement. That kind of information only comes from an agent who's been in the neighborhood long enough to learn it.

Here's where the whole episode ties together. In a world where AI can generate infinite information, the ability to have high-level, informed, human-to-human conversations with clients is the new professional edge.

Information itself is now commodity. Every buyer and seller in your market can generate CMAs, comparative analyses, market updates, and mortgage math on their phone in 90 seconds. What they can't generate is the conversation with a professional who has lived the local micro-market for years, who can translate the national headline into what it actually means for them, and who can make them feel calm and informed instead of anxious and confused.

That's the agent who wins the next decade. Not the agent with the biggest Instagram following. Not the agent with the flashiest marketing budget. The agent who can walk into a listing appointment and demonstrate — in the first 10 minutes — that they understand this specific street, this specific price band, this specific buyer pool, and this specific seller's actual options.

Alternatively, you can be the agent who took the beautiful selfie for their Instagram, has five billion likes, and can't tell a seller why the west side of Elm Street sells for 8% more than the east side. That agent isn't going to be in the business much longer.

Six concrete moves:

One — pull your local months-of-supply number for the whole market and for your top three specific micro-markets (neighborhood, price band, property type). Know exactly what kind of market each one is.

Two — save the concession and price-reduction stats above to reference in every listing appointment. Use them to frame realistic seller expectations from the first conversation.

Three — practice the two-weeks-or-10-showings script until it flows naturally. Get every seller to sign an acknowledgment on the trigger before you walk out of the appointment.

Four — send every buyer prospect the Cost of Waiting interactive. Let the math close the waiting-for-rates objection so you don't have to.

Five — go deep on one micro-market this month. Pick one neighborhood or one small area. Preview every active listing. Talk to residents. Understand the street-by-street dynamics. Become the one agent who genuinely knows that specific place better than anyone else.

Six — rehearse the local translation of every national headline you're likely to hear from clients. When they ask about the housing crash or the buyer's market or the rate crisis, have a specific, data-backed, calm, informed answer ready that translates the national into the local.

Nationally, yes, we're in a buyer's market. Under 5 months of supply is a seller's market, above 5 is a buyer's, and the national number is well above 5.

But nobody transacts at the national level. Every deal happens in a specific zip code, in a specific price band, at a specific moment in time. And within every market, micro-markets vary wildly. Your job as the professional is to localize the national story for every client conversation.

Learn the definitions. Know your local months-of-supply number. Understand your specific city's concession and reduction patterns. Master the two-weeks-or-10-showings script for overpricing situations. Send the Cost of Waiting interactive to every waiting buyer. Go deep on one micro-market this month.

And above all — become the agent who can communicate what the market is doing in your specific area with clarity, calm, and precision. That's the new competitive edge. It's not going anywhere. And nobody can take it from you.

Get to work.

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 translated every national headline into a specific local answer for your service area — months of supply, concession rate, reduction rate, and micro-market variations — how many more listing appointments would you win over the next 90 days from sellers who'd been getting national-level parroting from your competition?

— Tim & Julie Harris

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