More real estate agents see balance

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After several years of a lean and pricey housing market, real estate agents are starting to see more balance.

In the second quarter of the year, 44% of real estate agents surveyed in CNBC’s Housing Market Survey said they were seeing a balanced market between buyer and seller. That share is up from 30% in the third quarter of last year, when CNBC began its quarterly survey.

“It certainly feels like, depending on the home, depending on the neighborhood, depending on the condition and the price point, that both the buyer and the seller do have a little bit of leverage,” said Jeremy Kane, a real estate agent with EXP Realty in Denver. 

The CNBC Housing Market Survey is a national inquiry of real estate agents selected randomly across the United States. Responses for the second-quarter survey were collected between June 23 and June 30. This quarter, 53 agents shared their insights.

Home sales in May were up slightly, 3% higher than the same month last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. That was the result of more supply on the market and easing prices. 

Sellers appear to be getting more realistic when pricing their homes, not expecting the huge jumps seen in the first two years of the pandemic.

“No one really seems to be fighting me much on price like they used to,” said Bruce Jones, an agent with Compass in Nashville, Tennessee. “We’re not really seeing huge decreases in prices. We’ve kind of plateaued, but I don’t see people arguing too much about that. If it’s priced correctly, it is moving.”

Agents who reported at least one price cut to active listings dropped dramatically in CNBC’s second-quarter survey, at 57% compared with 89% during the third quarter of 2025. 

Home prices are still slightly higher than they were a year ago, up just under 1%, according to the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller national home price index. Sellers, however, seem to be pricing more to the market, resulting in fewer cuts. 

Asking prices in June were down 2.5% year over year, according to Realtor.com. That is the largest annual drop since the company began tracking this in 2017 and the eighth straight month of declines.

“I always tell sellers that I’m in the business of selling homes, not storing them, and so you really need to put a property at the right price in order to get it sold,” said Martha Thorn, an agent with Coldwell Banker in Tampa, Florida.

With asking prices more in line with…