Residential
Price Cuts Beat All Other Concessions for First-Time Buyers, Survey Shows
By Real Estate Wire Staff, . Real Estate Wire.
Four in ten first-time buyers say a price reduction is what would most give them the confidence to close, according to a Neighbors Bank survey reported by Realtor.com News. The finding lands at a moment when the national median list price sat at $419,250 in September, down 1.4% from a year earlier, marking eleven straight months of year-over-year declines per Realtor.com data.
The survey covered people actively searching for their first home or who had bought within the past year. On the concession question, price cuts outranked every alternative. Up to 83% said they would take a mortgage interest rate buydown offered by a seller or builder, and respondents also expect sellers to complete repairs ahead of closing and chip in on closing costs. But when asked what would most move them, the plurality pointed to the list price itself.
Buyers are also showing more willingness to walk. Neighbors Bank found that 86% feel comfortable making an offer below asking, and 57% have walked away from a deal because they felt they had the leverage to do so. That is a meaningful shift from the posture buyers held during the low-inventory years.
Mortgage rates remain the loudest obstacle: 70% of respondents told Neighbors Bank that current rates make every option feel out of reach. But the survey also captures a secondary anxiety. More than a quarter of first-time buyers said their biggest concern is waiting for rates to fall, only to watch prices climb in the meantime.
Bob Curtis, founder and chief executive of GetWyz, addressed that tension directly in comments to Realtor.com. "Buy when you find the right home and can comfortably afford the total cost of owning it," Curtis said, adding that neither the expectation of rising rates nor the hope of falling ones is a sound reason to time a purchase.
On the ground, St. Louis-based agent and investor Ben Mizes told Realtor.com he is watching first-time buyers recalibrate what they are willing to accept. "Rather than spending their budgets on the best house and backyard, they are looking farther away at smaller houses," Mizes said. "Many people are deciding that they can live with a house that doesn't have all of the ideal features rather than saving to buy a house for another 10 years." He added that buyers who do find a home they want are increasingly leaning on seller concessions to close the gap between asking price and what they can actually carry.
Nearly 90% of respondents said they are open to buying outside a major metro to find something affordable, and buyers are also considering different neighborhoods and smaller footprints. The survey found that 69% of first-time buyers feel that every decision in the process carries too much risk to get wrong, which may partly explain why price reductions, the most legible and immediate form of savings, rank above more complex instruments like rate buydowns.
The practical read for sellers and listing agents: in a market where buyers are informed, willing to walk, and anxious about both rates and prices, a headline price cut communicates value more clearly than any back-end concession. Rate buydowns require buyers to model their own financing; a lower number on the listing does not. Whether sellers in high-cost markets are willing to move far enough on price to meet that preference is the question the survey does not answer.
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