The best window for homebuyers to negotiate a discount arrives in the next several weeks across much of the country, with the exact timing varying by metro, according to a Redfin analysis published Friday.
Discounts off a home’s original asking price β through price cuts, negotiation or seller concessions β typically widen in late summer and peak in early fall before plateauing or shrinking into winter. Redfin identified when that peak lands in each major market.
Late August is the prime window in much of California, including Anaheim, Oakland, Sacramento and San Jose, along with Austin, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and two New York City suburbs, Nassau County, N.Y., and Newark, N.J.
Buyers in Atlanta, Denver and Seattle should wait slightly longer, with the best deals typically arriving in early September. Mid-September is the peak in much of Texas and Southern California, as well as Baltimore; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Nashville, Tenn. Late September is the sweet spot in Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Timing compounds an already favorable market
The seasonal pattern is landing in a market where buyers already hold leverage. Many of the metros with late-August or September windows are buyer’s markets β in most of Texas, Nashville and Atlanta, Redfin counted roughly twice as many sellers as buyers.
“Each homebuyer has their own timeline based on personal circumstances. But seasonality trends suggest buyers in these places looking to score a bargain may want to hit the pavement as summer comes to a close and the leaves start falling,” said Asad Khan, a senior economist at Redfin. “Sellers who put their home on the market in the spring or early summer and haven’t offloaded it yet may be open to dropping their price or offering concessions.”
Vanessa Leimback, a Redfin Premier agent in the Seattle area, described how that is playing out at the transaction level. “Buyers have the power and the opportunity to get a great deal on a home they would have been priced out of two years ago,” she said. “First-time buyers are getting qualified, applying for first-time homebuyer incentives and getting concessions from sellers β often to help buy down the mortgage rate β and closing the deal.”
She added that she is seeing homeowners who bought before 2019 sell and use accumulated equity to move up to larger properties.
Price is not the only variable
Redfin economists caution that the cheapest week is not automatically the best week to buy. The analysis tracks three distinct seasonal peaks β the week with the most new listings, the week with the most fresh inventory, and the week discounts peak β and those rarely coincide.
More inventory improves the odds of finding a suitable home; more competition creates urgency and forces stronger offers, reducing the chance of a discount. Buyers have to decide which matters more to them.
The methodology identifies the “best deals” moment as an inflection point rather than an absolute maximum: Redfin fits a smoothed curve to each region’s average discount index, finds the week of fastest improvement starting from the spring trough, then marks the first week where that rate of improvement falls below 10% of its maximum. Where discounts keep growing aggressively through year-end, the analysis uses the peak discount week instead. The underlying work was originally completed in April.
What it means
For agents, the practical value is in setting client expectations by market rather than by national averages β advising an Austin buyer and a Washington, D.C., buyer to move on the same timeline misreads both. For sellers still holding spring listings, the same data is a warning: the weeks when buyers are most likely to extract concessions are arriving now.
The caveat is that these are seasonal averages drawn from historical patterns, not a forecast for this particular autumn. Rate moves or a shift in inventory could override the seasonal signal, and Redfin frames the findings as tendencies rather than predictions.
The analysis is consistent with other recent evidence of buyer leverage. Redfin separately reported this week that home-purchase cancellations hit a near three-year high as buyers walked away from deals, while pending home sales sank to a five-month low.
