Note: This piece was originally featured in the January 2026 edition of MortgagePoint magazine.
Delistings—when a home is taken off the market without selling—are a normal feature of the housing cycle, often rising during winter months or around the holidays. But in recent months, delistings have surged far beyond their typical seasonal patterns, driven by a widening gap between sellers still anchored to peak-market pricing and buyers recalibrating their offers to today’s higher interest rates and affordability constraints.
According to Realtor.com’s December 2025 housing trends report, delistings in November jumped nearly 64% year-over-year and are up about 47.4% year to date. Since June, roughly 6% of all active listings have been pulled every month, marking an unusually high rate outside the winter season and the highest national pace since the metric was introduced.
A recent Redfin report noted that delistings have been rising since spring 2024, with year-over-year growth peaking at 39% in June 2025. They also surged in 2022, when mortgage rates rose from pandemic-era lows and homebuying demand dropped. “Delistings aren’t new,” said Jeremy Davis, President of Mortgage at Southern Bancorp. “What is new is the record levels that we’re seeing.”
Realtor.com Senior Economist Jake Krimmel agreed, noting that delisting is a normal phenomenon that can happen for many different reasons, regardless of market conditions. “What is different through 2025 is that delisting is very elevated,” Krimmel said. “Buyers and sellers are growing further apart on a home’s price.”
“Sellers seem to be still pricing for a market they remember,” Davis added, “which is warranted. It was just a few years ago that we were getting record housing prices throughout the pandemic. But buyers are shopping in the market that exists today, and the market does not care what your neighbor got in 2022.”
During a recent interview with CNBC, Asad Khan, Senior Economist at Redfin, explained that sellers seem unwilling to dial down their asking prices, even as bidders dry up. The average home that was delisted in September was on the market for around 100 days, according to Redfin’s analysis. Another issue, according to Krimmel, is that the inventory of homes for sale had increased for 26 straight months as of December. Moreover, unlike a few years ago, homebuyers must now contend with higher interest rates and insurance rates, so their offers reflect the current payments market, Davis said.
“This crisis is worsened by the ‘golden handcuffs’ phenomenon, which results from homeowners that locked in mortgage rates that were sub-3% from 2020 to 2022 and presently face mortgages with interest rates of 6.5-7%,” said Sain Rhodes, Customer Success Manager at Clever Offers.
There are many things happening simultaneously, said Nikki Beauchamp, Senior Global Real Estate Advisor and Associate Broker in the New York office of Sotheby’s International Realty.
“During the pandemic, prices escalated in many markets. There is the disconnect between those highs and the prices it takes to get something sold now,” Beauchamp explained. “If you’re pricing at the high end of the market range, [prospective] buyers don’t go to see the listing, so the home sits on the market longer. Then you have price reduction after price reduction, then the home gets pulled off the market.”
Regional Differences
The issue is most noticeable in markets where the pandemic stretched pricing the most, according to Davis.
Redfin reported that at the end of Q3 2025 delistings jumped most in Virginia Beach, VA, where they rose 74.5% year-over-year.
Next, were:
- Washington, D.C. (53.9%)
- San Jose, CA (53.3%)
- Dallas (52.1%)
- Houston (49.6%)
Delistings declined in only three metros:
- St. Louis, MO (-12.4%)
- Nassau County, NY (-7.2%)
- Chicago (-1%)
Delistings made up the biggest share of all listings in Miami, where 7.8% of all listings were pulled off the market.
Next came:
- Fort Lauderdale, FL (7.7%)
- Dallas (7.5%)
- Philadelphia (7.5%)
- West Palm Beach, Florida (7.5%)
Delistings made up the smallest share of all listings in:
- Pittsburgh (3.4%)
- Milwaukee (3.5%)
- Columbus, Ohio (3.6%)
- Cincinnati (3.7%)
- Chicago (4.1%)
Stale listings (on the market 60+ days without going under contract) were most common in:
- Florida and
- Texas: Miami (84.6%)
- Fort Lauderdale, FL (84.6%)
- Austin, Texas (82.8%)
- West Palm Beach, FL (82%)
- San Antonio (81.2%)
They were least common in:
- San Jose, CA (44.2%)
- San Francisco (45.9%)
- Boston (48.9%)
- Providence, RI (49.1%)
- Milwaukee (49.2%)
“It’s an affordability truth serum,” Davis said. “Buyers are hitting their payment ceilings with the increased interest rates that we have sustained for a few years now.”
Beauchamp added that over-priced starter properties are particularly susceptible to delisting because potential buyers of those homes are already economically stretched. Even potential move-up buyers are looking more closely at the costs of moving, with many choosing to improve their current homes “to make them work” so a move is no longer necessary, Beauchamp adds.
“That happens more often than people realize,” he said.
Is a Market Crash Ahead?
“I don’t believe the market is crashing; I think it’s recalibrating,” Davis said.
He explained that the market is pushing back against unrealistic expectations created by sellers getting anchored to pandemic-level pricing, while potential buyers are living in today’s reality, which incorporates the
fact that, overall, costs have gone up.
“It’s not just about the mortgage, taxes, and insurance; it’s also people’s grocery bills, the cost of utilities, etc,” he said.
Those rising costs put a damper on what prospective buyers can afford to pay, while sellers want to squeeze every penny out of their homes. Both are legitimate concerns, Davis points out. When the difference is too large and too persistent, delistings increase. Some would-be sellers would rather pull their home off the market and rent it out than sell for less money than they want, according to Redfin.
Many of them would consider listing their home again when the housing market picks up.
“Rather than having a distressed sale, sellers are just waiting until the market conditions are a little more favorable,” Krimmel said. “Sellers who are delisting have the choice to wait rather than sell at a price that they don’t want to sell at.”
Some who have delisted will put their properties back on the market at a lower price, but others will put their homes on the market at an even more unrealistic price, according to Beauchamp.
“The majority of the delisters come back as shadow inventory,” said Jeff Lichtenstein, CEO and Broker for Palm Beach Gardens, Florida-based Echo Fine Properties, referencing the industry term for properties that are unoccupied or soon to become unoccupied, but which have not yet been put on the market.
“One thing that is going to help the market along is that prices are dropping more than reported,” Lichtenstein continued. “That is because we are having somewhere between 3-4% inflation. Home values should be rising with inflation, [but they aren’t]. Resales don’t have to adjust like new construction that has to pass along labor and tariff costs to the consumer.”
“When delistings start spiking, the biggest misconception is that demand is dead,” Davis said. “That’s not we are seeing. Demand is alive and well. What is struggling is affordability and expectations. From my perspective, the delistings are just the market clearing its throat and asking for a reality check.”
To minimize the level of delistings, Davis recommends that real estate and mortgage professionals work with buyers and sellers so that they understand the realities of today’s real estate market and the macroeconomic environment (higher costs for groceries, utilities, etc.).
“I tell my team, lead with truth, not temptation,” Davis said. “Buyers don’tneed pressure to go harder or higher. They need clarity, and sellers need the same thing, and it’s our job to help them understand the payment, the trade-offs, and the long-term benefit of prioritizing homeownership for the equity that it can build, and the wealth that it can build for their family. If we lead with truth and trust increases, I think conversion will follow.”
“It’s momentum-based pricing versus aspirational-based pricing,” Beauchamp agreed.
“We have to normalize honest conversations with sellers. Price discovery is not failure. It is the market doing its job,” Davis said. “Sellers who delist today may come back stronger when pricing, incentives, or terms reflect current affordability.”
“Rising delistings and the growth of refuge markets capture the push and pull defining today’s housing market,” said Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at Realtor.com. “A number of sellers are retreating after listing if the market doesn’t meet their price expectations, while buyers are strategically redirecting to the metros that remain affordable. These dynamics reflect how higher rates and years of rapid price growth have rewritten the rules of engagement for both buyers and sellers.”
How Long Will the Phenomenon Last?
Krimmel suggests that lower interest rates and renewed homebuying interest in the spring and summer should help bring delistings down to more normal levels, but others aren’t so sure the problem will ease that quickly.
“I expect delistings will stay elevated until sellers fully adjust to the affordability reality that we’re in,” Davis said. “If rates ease in 2026, some of the pressure will break, but the bigger issue will take longer. Pricing psychology takes longer to correct. We’ve seen that happen with interest rates in the past year. Hale agreed, noting in the Realtor. com November Monthly Housing Trends Report, “As we move into 2026, gradual improvements in affordability and more consistent inventory will be key to unlocking a more balanced market.”
Rising delistings are not a sign that buyers have disappeared, but that the housing market is renegotiating its terms. After years of rapid price growth, higher interest rates and rising ownership costs have forced a reset in expectations that sellers are still adjusting to. Until pricing psychology fully catches up with today’s affordability reality, homes will continue to retreat from the market, waiting for conditions that no longer exist or have yet to return.
