In a sign of home sellers’ frustration over how long it’s taking to find a buyer, more owners are opting to pull their property off the market rather than lower the asking price.
That’s according to a recent report by Realtor.com that finds that so-called delistings, or homes taken off the market without having been sold, were up 38% in June since the start of 2025 and 48% from a year ago.
“Fewer and fewer sellers are deciding to enter the market, and increasingly more are deciding to jump out,” Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com told CBS MoneyWatch.
Signs of deadlock
One indicator that more sellers are exiting the housing market is the ratio between the number of delistings and listings. For every 100 new homes listed nationally in June, 21 homes were taken off the market, the report found. That’s up from 13 delisted homes per 100 new listings in May.
A steady rise in delistings could push buyers and sellers further apart, creating a deadlock in the housing market, according to Krimmel.
“The thing that’s going to prevent buyers and sellers from getting closer together is if all the sellers who maybe could or should be lowering their prices to meet the demand where it is are instead taking their homes off the market altogether,” he said. “So it’s kind of like keeping us in this holding pattern.”
The trend comes as the supply of homes for sale begins to grow in certain U.S. regions, causing prices in those areas to drop. The number of homes for sale in July surged nearly 25% from a year ago, a post-pandemic high, according to Realtor.com.
Despite the rise in housing inventory, home sales around the U.S. remain relatively stagnant, with steep prices and high mortgage rates continuing to deter many would-be homebuyers, experts told CBS MoneyWatch. Realtor.com data shows that pending home sales, or listings under contract, in July fell 3% in compared with the same period last year.
No hurry to sell
When homeowners are eager to sell a property, they typically lower the price in order to offload it quicker. However, those who are not up against the same type of time constraints may be willing to wait it out longer — especially if they’re benefiting from a favorable mortgage rate.
“Maybe you’re locked into payments that are relatively affordable for you,” Krimmel said. “You would prefer to sell, but not at a price that you’re not comfortable with.”
Another factor is playing into the delisting trend, experts said — the surge in housing prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the housing market was red hot. As newly remote workers flocked to areas like Austin, Texas, home prices rose at record levels, giving sellers a chance to cash in.
While the market has since cooled substantially, sellers’ pricing expectations have been slower to catch up.
“Maybe we’ve gotten a bit spoiled by very high home prices over the last many years, but we are seeing some softness in the market right now,” Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told CBS MoneyWatch.
That may not be true in all markets, however. Miami is one of the places where sellers have been least willing to budge on price. According to Realtor.com’s analysis, 59 homes were delisted for every 100 new homes listed in the southern Florida city — the highest ratio among the cities Realtor.com tracked. Meanwhile, less than 18% of listed homes in Miami came with a price reduction in July, according to Realtor.com.
“If sellers are choosing to take properties off the market rather than lower prices, it may signal renewed confidence in Miami’s future, and a growing belief that this is a market worth holding for the long haul,” Ana Bozovic, a Miami-based real estate agent and founder of Analytics Miami, told Realtor.com.
