Is the housing market starting to favor buyers?
The real estate company Redfin reports that home sellers in Washington state and across the country are increasingly offering concessions — such as money toward repairs or closing costs — to lower a home buyer’s total costs.
Sellers offered concessions in 44% of U.S. home-sale transactions in the first quarter of 2025 as listings reached a five-year high, Redfin reported. That’s up from concessions being offered in 39.3% of U.S. home-sale transactions the previous year.
Redfin analyzed 24 major metropolitan areas using data submitted by Redfin buyers’ agents nationwide.
Here’s what to know.
Seller concessions on the rise in Washington state
Seattle ranked at the top of the list of metros where concessions were rising the most, Redfin reported. Home sellers in Seattle provided concessions to buyers in 71.3% of home-sale transactions in the first quarter of 2025. A year earlier, Seattle home sellers offered concessions in just 36.4% of home-sale transactions.
“It’s super common to see seller concessions for condos and new-construction townhomes, but less so for single-family homes—unless the single-family home has been sitting on the market for a while,” Stephanie Kastner, a Redfin real estate agent in Seattle, said in the Redfin report. “Condos have become a tougher sell because of skyrocketing HOA fees and insurance. And builders are offering concessions because it’s in their best interest to keep sale prices high; they’re willing to pay buyers’ closing costs and maybe provide a free washer-dryer if it means they don’t have to drop the listing price.”
In Portland, Oregon, the share of home sales with concessions was 63.9%, the second-highest share among the metros Redfin analyzed.
Why are sellers offering more concessions?
Home sellers are giving more concessions because buyer demand has become “sluggish” due to overpriced homes, high mortgage rates, and concerns about the state of the economy, according to the Redfin report. This is giving buyers more negotiating power.
“Buyers used to ask for concessions to cover little things like repairs,” Chaley McVay, a Redfin real estate agent in Portland, Oregon, said in the Redfin report. “Now they’re negotiating concessions so they can afford to buy a home. A lot of sellers are offering money for mortgage-rate buydowns, and I recently had one seller cover seven months of HOA fees for the buyer.”
What’s the median home price in Washington state?
The median selling price of a single-family home in Washington state was $641,700 in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a report from the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington.
In King County, which includes Seattle, the median price of a single-family home was $943,100, according to the report.
Metro areas where home sellers gave concessions, ranked
Here is the list of metro areas Redfin analyzed with the share of home sales with concessions in the first quarter of 2025:
Seattle, Washington: 71.3%
San Diego, California: 60.7%
Los Angeles, California: 56.1%
Sacramento, California: 52.5%
Riverside, California: 51.2%
San Antonio, Texas: 44.4%
Baltimore, Maryland: 41.4%
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 27.6%
Boston, Massachusetts: 18.7%
San Jose, California: 16.7%
San Francisco, California: 14.9%
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Seattle home sellers top nation for giving concessions to make deals