Home Sellers Are Quitting at Record Rates as Buyers Refuse to Pay

Miami, Denver and Houston Lead the Delisting Surge

If you’re trying to sell a house right now, you’re not alone in your frustration. Across the country, sellers are pulling their homes off the market at the highest rate ever recorded.

They’re not getting the prices they want, and instead of cutting their asking price, they’re walking away. Miami, Denver, and Houston are seeing the worst of it, but the problem runs deeper than a few cities.

Buyers and sellers are stuck in a standoff, and 2025 has become the year nobody blinks.

45% More Sellers Quit in 2025

Realtor. com’s November housing report shows just how bad things have gotten.

Delistings through October are up 45% compared to the same period in 2024. About 6% of all listed homes have been pulled from the market each month since June.

That makes 2025 the highest delisting year since Realtor. com started tracking in 2022.

Sellers came to market expecting one thing and found another.

Senior economist Jake Krimmel called the trend a reflection of a stagnant, frustration-filled market where neither side will budge.

Miami Leads with 45 Delistings Per 100

Miami tops the list for seller frustration. For every 100 new listings that hit the market in October, 45 were pulled.

That’s up from 34 a year ago. The city faces a unique pile of problems: insurance costs have surged, condo fees have spiked after new building safety laws passed following the Surfside collapse, and median prices remain out of reach for local buyers.

UBS ranked Miami the riskiest housing market in the world for the second year running. Prices jumped 70% since 2019, but incomes only rose about 5%.

Denver Sellers Cut 31% of Asking Prices

Denver sellers are adjusting faster than anywhere else in the country. In September, 31.1% of Denver-area sellers lowered their asking price, nearly double the national average of 16. 7%.

The typical discount was 3. 3%.

Homes now sit on the market for 70 days on average, up from 56 days a year earlier. More than half of all active listings carry a price reduction.

Sellers who bought recently are especially reluctant to cut prices because they’d be locking in a loss, so homes just sit there.

Houston Rounds Out the Top Three

Houston’s delisting ratio hit 37 per 100 new listings in October, up from 31 last year. The Texas market rode a boom during the pandemic as buyers fled California and the Northeast.

Now the math has changed. Mortgage rates more than doubled, insurance costs climbed, and the flood of new inventory gave buyers options they didn’t have before.

Sellers who listed expecting bidding wars found empty open houses instead. Many chose to wait rather than accept less than they paid.

Summer Surge Broke the Pattern

Normally, delistings slow down in summer when buyer activity peaks. Sellers relist in fall and winter when traffic dies down.

But 2025 threw out the playbook. Delistings jumped 48% in June compared to the prior year, then spiked 57% in July.

Sellers flooded the market expecting buyers to show up. They didn’t.

High mortgage rates, elevated prices, shaky consumer confidence, and economic uncertainty kept them on the sidelines. Inventory boomed, but demand never matched it.

Mortgage Rates Stuck Above 6%

Rates averaged 6. 6% through most of 2025, and even recent dips kept them above 6%.

That’s more than double the sub-3% rates buyers locked in during the pandemic.

The Federal Reserve cut rates three times in late 2025, but mortgage rates barely moved because they’re tied to longer-term bond yields and inflation expectations.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged the problem at a December press conference, saying housing will remain difficult because the Fed can’t fix a structural shortage.

Home Prices Jumped 53% Since 2019

The median household now needs about $110,000 in annual income to afford a typical home, according to Oxford Economics. That’s nearly double the $58,400 needed in the same quarter of 2020.

Prices rose so fast that even falling mortgage rates wouldn’t restore affordability in many markets.

Goldman Sachs found the average mortgage payment as a share of income jumped from under 20% before the pandemic to over 30% today.

First-time buyers hit a record low of 21% of purchases, and the average age of first-time buyers climbed to 40.

Buyers Head to Refuge Markets

Cost-conscious buyers aren’t giving up entirely. They’re moving to what Realtor.

com calls “refuge markets,” smaller metros in the Midwest where prices remain affordable. Grand Rapids, Michigan leads the pack, followed by St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh. These cities saw the strongest price-per-square-foot gains of any metros in 2025.

The typical Grand Rapids home costs $389,900, more than $25,000 below the national median. St. Louis draws buyers from Chicago, New York, and Denver looking for more space at lower prices.

Grand Rapids Prices Rise 5.5%

Grand Rapids posted the largest year-over-year price increase among refuge markets at 5. 5%.

Prices there have climbed more than 15% over the past three years as out-of-state buyers pour in. A two-bedroom can still list for $245,000.

St. Louis came second with a 5% annual gain, followed by Cleveland at 4.5%. The pattern is clear: buyers who can’t afford coastal metros are reshaping demand toward cities where the math still works. Homes in Grand Rapids go pending in about eight days.

91% of Denver Homes Lost Value

Zillow’s October report put Denver at the top of a different list: the major metro with the highest share of homes declining in value. A full 91% of Denver properties lost value compared to a year earlier.

Austin followed at 89%, then Sacramento at 88%, and Phoenix and Dallas tied at 87%. The losses are concentrated in the West and South, where prices ran up fastest during the pandemic.

The Northeast and Midwest have mostly avoided the declines so far.

2026 May Bring Relief

Realtor. com expects the market to slowly improve next year.

Inventory keeps building, mortgage rates may ease into the low 6% range, and income growth is finally projected to outpace home price growth for the first time since the Great Recession. Redfin calls it a “Great Housing Reset.”

Affordability won’t return overnight, but buyers may start to see more options and better negotiating leverage.

For sellers who pulled their listings in 2025, the waiting game continues, and 2026 will show whether patience pays off.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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