Add The New York Post on Google Homebuyers across the country are persuading sellers to sweeten the deal with cash for repairs, closing costs and mortgage-rate buydowns — but buyers in the New York area are largely being left empty-handed.
Sellers provided concessions in a whopping 44.7% of US home sales in August, up from 42.6% one year earlier and the highest share recorded for the month since at least 2020, according to a new Redfin analysis.
In the New York metro area, however, concessions appeared in a paltry 5.7% of sales — the second-lowest share among the 29 major metros analyzed.
That means buyers nationally were nearly eight times as likely as those in the New York area to receive a seller perk.
Seller concessions can include money toward repairs or closing costs, mortgage-rate buydowns and even appliances. They do not include reductions to a home’s listing or final sale price, Redfin noted.
The national rise comes as a glut of homes for sale gives buyers more choices and greater negotiating power. August marked the strongest buyer’s market in Redfin records dating to 2013, with sellers increasingly willing to offer incentives to get deals across the finish line.
“Buyers know they can be picky. They’re asking for every concession under the sun,” Amanda Peterson, a Redfin Premier agent in Dallas, said in the report.
The perks are especially common in the Sun Belt, where pandemic-era building booms have collided with softer demand.
Atlanta topped the list, with sellers offering concessions in a staggering 72.8% of transactions. It was followed by Charlotte at 67.9%, Phoenix at 67.4%, Las Vegas at 66.7% and Raleigh at 66.3%.
Nashville, Houston and Las Vegas now rank among the country’s five strongest buyer’s markets, with more than twice as many sellers as buyers, according to Redfin.
New York, by contrast, remains a balanced market with roughly equal numbers of buyers and sellers — giving house hunters less leverage to demand extras. Its concession rate also slipped by 0.9 percentage points from a year earlier.
Other markets where concessions remained relatively rare included San Francisco at 18.6%, Chicago at 21.9% and Philadelphia at 25.5%.
Some buyers are managing to score two discounts at once. Nationwide, 15.8% of homes sold in August received both a price cut and a seller concession — also the highest August share in Redfin’s records.
The analysis was based on deals submitted by Redfin buyers’ agents and covered the three-month period ending Aug. 31.
