The headlines are hard to ignore: according to a January 2026 Redfin report, there were a record 47% more home sellers than buyers in the U.S. housing market in December 2025—the largest gap since Redfin began tracking this data in 2013.
Nationally, home prices crept up just 0.1% year-over-year, the slowest growth since June 2023.
For prospective homebuyers, the news is mixed. More inventory and motivated sellers are nice, but high mortgage rates (back above 6%) and economic uncertainty are keeping many of them on the sidelines. For passive real estate investors, though, this is a different story entirely.
A buyer's market doesn't just benefit people shopping for a primary residence but reshapes the acquisition landscape for investors. If you know where to look, that creates real opportunity.
The gap between sellers and buyers didn't appear out of nowhere. A few forces are converging at once.
Sun Belt metros (many of which saw explosive population and price growth during the pandemic) are now working through an oversupply problem. Homebuilders ramped up aggressively to meet surging demand over the last several years, and that inventory has outpaced the buyer pool as affordability constraints push many would-be buyers to the sidelines.
Austin had an estimated 128% more sellers than buyers in December. San Antonio came in at 103%. Houston hit 96.6%. Dallas registered 86.8% more sellers than buyers.
Meanwhile, St. Louis, also part of REI Nation's portfolio of markets, registered as a balanced market, with a modest 4.8% more sellers than buyers. That kind of stability, in a market where national conditions are otherwise lopsided, is worth paying attention to.
Not all markets are moving in the same direction. Investors who understand the nuance have a meaningful advantage over the competition.
So are more sellers and declining prices a bad thing for real estate investors?
When sellers outnumber buyers by a record margin, motivated sellers follow. Longer days on market, reduced asking prices, and more willingness to negotiate are hallmarks of a buyer's market. For investors targeting below or near the median price point (which is the smart approach in turnkey SFR investing), this means a break from the frenzied competition of the past few years.
But we know that price alone shouldn’t drive acquisitions. Strong properties in strong markets still command fair values, and overpaying for a mediocre asset in a weak location is as risky as ever. But investors who have been waiting for conditions to become more favorable have more room to breathe right now than they've had in years.
The goal isn't to buy cheap. The goal is to buy well—and a buyer's market improves the conditions for doing exactly that.
The same affordability pressures keeping buyers off the purchase market are pushing people into rental housing.
Stubbornly high prices and mortgage rates aren't disappearing overnight. The buyers who retreated from the market in December didn't stop needing housing: they became renters. That dynamic sustains and, in many markets, strengthens rental demand.
Single-family rentals, in particular, benefit from this dynamic. Households that wanted to purchase a home but couldn't (or chose not to) are increasingly choosing SFR rentals as the next-best option. That demand supports resident retention, competitive rent rates, and low vacancy over time.
The Redfin data does raise a fair question for investors, particularly for ours: if Sun Belt markets like Dallas and San Antonio are showing significant price corrections and high inventory, should I be concerned?
The short answer is: it depends on what you're measuring.
For investors buying to sell—flippers, short-term plays, pandemic-era speculators—an oversupplied market with falling prices is a problem. For buy-and-hold investors with a long time horizon and a property management infrastructure already in place, not so much.
Price normalization in markets that appreciated dramatically from 2020 to 2022 isn't necessarily a red flag. In many cases, it's a return to fundamentals.
The key question isn't whether prices are declining. It's whether the market's underlying economic drivers—jobs, population, income growth—remain intact.
In the South and Midwest markets where REI Nation operates, those fundamentals have proven resilient across multiple cycles, including the Great Recession and the COVID disruption.
A record buyer's market is one data point in a larger picture. Savvy investors don't try to time the market but position themselves to take advantage of current conditions, whatever they may be.
Keep Reading: When is a Good Time to Buy Real Estate?
Right now, several of those conditions are aligning at once: increased inventory, motivated sellers, sustained rental demand, and price moderation in markets that were previously overheated.
The investors who move deliberately and with the right partnerships in place are the ones who look back at moments like this as a catalyst for a stronger, better real estate portfolio.
Ready to talk through what this market means for your portfolio? Connect with an REI Nation advisor to get a personalized read on today's landscape.