Housing prices are dropping and buyers are scoring steep discounts on their purchases, indicating that the real estate market is becoming more favorable for buyers. But while some homebuyers are getting better deals, housing is still out of reach for many Americans and the 30-year mortgage rate remains above 6% — double what it was in 2021. 

The typical homebuyer got a discount of 3.8% or $15,196 in 2025, with 62% of all homebuyers paying less than the list price, according to a new Redfin study. 

“Some sellers haven’t adjusted to the fact that demand is much slower than it was during the pandemic homebuying frenzy. They watched their neighbor’s home sell for tens of thousands of dollars over the asking price back then, and are now pricing their homes based on that,” stated the authors of the study. 

And for the first time in two years, national home prices have gone negative, declining 1.4% in the last quarter of 2025, according to Parcl Labs, a housing data and analytics firm. 

“I think big picture, any decline or slowing of growth is better for buyers than the type of growth that we have been seeing for a few years,” said Nicholas Kacher, an associate professor of economics at Scripps College in California. 

But although there are positive signals out there for homebuyers, there are also some “countervailing points” that indicate the market isn’t entirely in their favor, said David Reiss, a law professor at Cornell University who studies housing policy. 

Signs that buyers may still struggle on the market

Home sales are at a 30-year-low, which means sellers are either keeping houses off the market or buyers are not willing to purchase them, Reiss said. 

“The market is not super liquid right now,” Reiss said. 

Plus, nearly a quarter of homes still sold above list price last year, Reiss pointed out. 

Home affordability is also largely based on geographic location. “It’s affordable to buy outside of cities across most of the U.S.,” Kacher said. “But they’re typically not in places where there are lots of high-paying jobs.”

In a seller’s market like San Francisco, the typical homebuyer paid 3.8% above the asking price in 2025. 

And even if prices are declining steeply, you have to look at what the rate of increase was like during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In Austin, Texas, housing prices declined 10% year over year, according to Parcl. But Austin is located in Travis County, where home prices rose 22% between 2021 to 2022, Kacher pointed out. 

If you were priced out of the market then, the recent decline in prices might not be enough to get you back into the market, Kacher said. 

Home insurance premiums are also up 30% since 2019, Kacher said. While that only translates to $100 to $200 a year, it’s an example of how a lot of the costs associated with housing continue to get expensive, he said.

“When buyers are trying to figure out not just what’s the sticker price of the home, but what’s actually going to be the monthly cost associated with living there, they’re factoring in insurance. They’re factoring in repairs and maintenance and the labor associated with that goes into home ownership,” Kacher said. “Those things have also all gotten more expensive over this time period.”

The solution: Increase supply 

The major issue with the housing market is that the U.S. is simply not building enough housing, Reiss said. 

“It’s tough to build housing, and a lot of markets, lots of localities, discourage it. They don’t want new housing. They don’t want the construction. They don’t want to pay for the social services that are attached to it, like new schools and new medical facilities,” Reiss said. 

And even though high mortgage rates discourage buyers, lower rates might not be the best solution either. 

“If interest rates fall, everybody’s willingness and ability to pay a higher sticker price for a home goes up, and that bids up the prices of those homes,” Kacher said. “So even lower interest rates don’t always meaningfully push down the actual cost of owning a home in the way that just simply more supply would.”