More homes on the market are going ‘stale’ due to this big listing mistake

More homes for sale are going “stale” after sitting on the market for months, raising concerns that some sellers are overestimating what the market is willing to pay.

In December 2024, half of all active listings had sat on the market for 70 days or longer, up from 61 a year earlier, and the longest median time on the market for December since 2019.

Worse, the share of “super stale” listings that have languished on the market for more than 180 days is also creeping up, hitting 24.3% last month, the highest percentage for a December since 2020.

Stale listings can raise red flags for buyers, who may fear that there is something wrong with the home. However, experts say the primary reason listings go stale is simply incorrect pricing.

“Overpricing is the main culprit for listings becoming stale. Many sellers have expectations about their home value that stem from the buying craze of 2021–22 when listing prices shot up across the country,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner.

“Sellers can see what their neighbors got for their homes during that period and are reluctant to list for less, leading to their homes sitting on the market for longer and eventually needing to receive price reductions to finally sell,” he adds.

While home prices are still growing at a national level, they are doing so much more slowly than during the post-pandemic buying frenzy, when mortgage rates were less than half of where they now stand.

In some markets, prices are essentially flat or declining on an annual basis, posing a harsh new reality for sellers who have become accustomed to skyrocketing valuations.

Half of all active home listings sat on the market for over 70 days in December 2024. Christopher Sadowski

“Realizing that your home is worth less on the market than it was a few years ago is a tough pill to swallow, but sellers must accept the new normal if the pace of sales is to pick back up,” says Berner.

Where stale listings are rising fastest

Last month, time on the market rose compared with last year in 46 of the 50 largest metro areas, up from 42 in November.

Median days on the market increased the most in Nashville, TN (+22 days), Orlando, FL (+21 days), and Rochester, NY (+21 days).

Notably, time on the market in those three metro areas, as well as 11 others, increased to levels higher than the pre-pandemic December average seen from 2017 to 2019.

At the state level, there are 12 states where homes are now spending more time on the market than they did in 2017–19.

They are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington.

Prolonged higher mortgage rates weigh on prices

After dipping close to 6% last fall, average rates on 30-year fixed mortgages are now quickly approaching 7% once again, diminishing purchasing power for buyers.

“Behind the scenes is the true villain of the story: mortgage rates,” says Berner. “Higher rates have softened demand, slowing the market and leading to listings spending more time on the market and some becoming stale. Sellers will adjust by listing their homes at lower prices.”

The median list price of homes active in December was down 1.8% from a year earlier, to $402,502, according to the Realtor.com December inventory report. The price decline was due in part to the rising share of smaller, more affordable homes for sale, but it should still serve as a signal to sellers.

Home sales have also slowed to a snail’s pace, following two consecutive years of the lowest transaction volume since 1995.

Slower sales can make it harder to accurately price a listing, because there are fewer recent comparable sales to work with, says Brian Stephens, a real estate agent in Lakeland, FL, and team leader with eXp Realty.

“You do have to dig deeper into the data to find comps to support what you believe the price is and what the market is,” he tells Realtor.com. “You have to stretch, you have to retrace your boundary, stay in the same ZIP code, and then find other comps that are going to work with that home, but maybe just are outside that neighborhood.”

A return to normal?

Real estate experts caution that the rising share of stale listings is not necessarily a sign of impending doom, but may rather simply represent a return to conditions seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, when homes would often sit on the market for months before selling.

Nationally, the time a typical active listing had spent on the market last month was still eight days less than the average seen in Decembers from 2017 to 2019. (Time on the market is seasonal and typically peaks in January, due to the low number of new listings coming on the market that month.)

“We’re getting back to a normal market where it takes three to five months to sell a house,” says Stephens. “You may get your home sold within a week or two, but normally it’s going to take three to five months to sell, because it’s just a normal market.”

However, that shift might require some adjustment for both buyers and sellers, who have become accustomed to seeing homes flying under contract within days of listing.

“The sky isn’t falling on sellers. We’re just getting back into a sustainable market pace unlike where we were in the post-pandemic buying bonanza,” says Berner.

What to do about a stale listing

For sellers who fail to find a buyer after many months on the market, there is ultimately a single solution to find a buyer quickly: reduce the price.

Stephens says that’s a message his sellers are usually resistant to hearing. For that reason, he tries to offer alternate solutions based on feedback from prospective buyers.

Maybe the home could use a fresh coat of paint, for example, or new landscaping. Perhaps the seller could offer a flooring allowance.

“I try not to home in on price too much, because it is normally price,” he says. “But that’s never what they want to hear.”

After six months or more on the market, Stephens sometimes advises clients to pull their listing off the market, and then relist a few months later, when a new pool of active buyers is house hunting.

Finally, if a home fails to sell after a year, he says that sometimes the best thing to do for the client is to let them try to sell the home with a new listing agent.

“Sometimes it’s best to walk away as a real estate agent, honestly. Just let somebody else try it,” he says. “But then, normally what they’ll do is relist with somebody else, who will tell them they need to reduce the price, and then they do it—just like we told them six months ago.”