Where Price Cuts Are Surging Across the U.S.

Price cuts are piling up, even as the pace holds steady

Price cuts are on the rise across the country, but the speed at which sellers are cutting stayed roughly the same between mid-July and the start of September.

Across the 16 major metros with reliable price history in Movoto listing data, 34.7% of active listings on September 1 were below their original ask, up from 33.2% on July 14. Fifteen of the 16 markets saw an increase.

However, the speed with which sellers are cutting prices rose in only 9 of the 16 metros. The share of listings cut within the prior 30 days was 18.35% as of July and 18.36% as of September. Sellers are not cutting prices any faster than they were in July, but homes that already took a cut are piling up on the market, so the share of listings carrying a discount keeps growing.

Discounted inventory didn’t move evenly across the country. Some metros saw far faster growth than others.

Where discounted inventory grew the fastest

Tacoma has the highest discounted share of any metro in the analysis: 46.5% of its active listings were below their original ask on September 1, up from 43.8% in July.

Elgin, Illinois, in Chicago’s far western suburbs, saw the biggest increase. The share of listings priced below their original asking price rose 3.6 percentage points in seven weeks.

Recent price-cut activity increased there too, from 14.6% to 17.7%. Here’s where discounted inventory grew the most:

The size of the price cuts also stands out in several markets. In Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, New York, the median reduced listing is $55,000 below its original asking price. In Orange County, California, the median reduction is $51,000, while in Los Angeles it is $50,000. These figures show that sellers who are cutting prices in these markets are making substantial adjustments to their original asking prices.

Price cuts increased the most among mid-priced homes. Across the 16 metros, the share of listings priced below their original asking price rose 2.0 percentage points for homes priced within 30% of the local median. That was about twice the increase seen among lower- and higher-priced homes.

Utah’s market flipped in seven weeks

An analysis of broader county-level data revealed an even sharper shift in Utah. Among the 388 counties analyzed across the U.S., several markets along Utah’s Wasatch Front stood out for some of the largest increases in price-cut activity heading into fall.

In mid-July, recent price cuts in these counties were nearly dormant: between 2% and 3.2% of active listings had been cut in the prior 30 days. By September 1, that figure had multiplied several times over.

Recent price-cut activity wasn’t the only measure that increased. The share of all active listings priced below their original asking price also roughly doubled across the five counties over the same seven weeks. In Davis County, that share rose from 10.2% to 24.6%; in Salt Lake County, from 10.6% to 23.0%; Weber County from 11.9% to 22.5%; Utah County from 10.6% to 19.9%; and Tooele County from 9.4% to 18.2%.

Five of the eight largest increases across all 388 U.S. counties analyzed were along Utah’s Wasatch Front. The region went from having some of the lowest shares of discounted listings in mid-July to looking much more like the rest of the markets analyzed just seven weeks later.

Local coverage caught the shift as it happened. In mid-August, Deseret News reported Utah sellers coming under pressure on price, quoting the Utah Association of Realtors’ president-elect on sellers making price adjustments and becoming more motivated as the late-summer market wound down. Movoto’s listing data puts a number on what agents on the ground were already describing.

Resort markets have the largest cuts

Several resort markets also rank near the top of the county-level analysis, but they stand out for the size of their price cuts rather than how frequently sellers are cutting prices.

In Eagle County, Colorado, home to the Vail Valley, 44.5% of listings have been reduced, with a median cut of $100,000. In Summit County, Utah, home to Park City, just 9.9% of listings have been reduced, but the median cut is also $100,000. In Flathead County, Montana, around Kalispell and Whitefish, 52.8% of listings have been reduced, with a median cut of $59,950. La Plata County, Colorado, home to Durango, has also seen more than half of listings reduced, while Berkshire County, Massachusetts, saw its share rise 10.2 percentage points to 41.1%, with a median cut of $40,000.

For buyers who have watched mountain-town prices from the sidelines, these larger reductions may offer more room to negotiate.

Price cuts are becoming less common across Florida

While the share of listings priced below their original asking price climbed nearly everywhere else, it fell in 17 of 29 large Florida counties. In Sarasota County, that share fell from 42.8% to 38.7%; in Collier County, from 46.2% to 42.2%; and in Lee County, home to Cape Coral and Fort Myers, from 53.0% to 49.9%. That does not necessarily mean Florida demand is rebounding. The share of discounted listings remains relatively high across Florida, even as it has declined in many counties since July.