Is it a buyer’s or a seller’s market right now?

Updated October 23, 2026

Every few weeks a new national headline declares a winner. This fall it’s buyers, by a landslide. Then you tour a four-bedroom in a Germantown school zone, and the listing agent tells you there’s already an offer and a second showing on the calendar.

Both things are true at once, and that’s why “is it a buyer’s or seller’s market in Memphis” doesn’t have one answer. It has an answer for your price range and your corner of the county, this month. The east metro alone runs on at least two different clocks right now.

Below is how we figure out which one you’re in, the September 2026 numbers, and what we’d do with them if you’re buying or selling anywhere from Cordova out to Collierville.

What makes a buyer’s or seller’s market

Strip away the jargon and it comes down to who needs the deal more. When there are more homes for sale than buyers ready to buy them, sellers compete for attention and buyers get room to negotiate. That’s a buyer’s market. Flip it, with too few listings and too many shoppers, and the leverage moves to whoever holds the keys.

Redfin puts a number on it. In its monthly buyers vs. sellers report, a metro is a buyer’s market when sellers outnumber buyers by more than 10%, a seller’s market when sellers are more than 10% fewer than buyers, and balanced anywhere in between.

Agents tend to use a simpler yardstick, months of supply: how long it would take to sell every active listing at the current sales pace. Under about four months usually favors sellers. Four to six is roughly balanced. Past six, buyers are in charge. Treat those bands as a rule of thumb. They’re still the first thing we check for any neighborhood.

Where things stand as of September 2026

This section gets refreshed each quarter. Figures below are the latest available on October 23, 2026.

Nationally, this is the most buyer-friendly market in more than a decade. Redfin estimates there were 62.6% more home sellers than buyers in September, the widest gap in its records going back to 2013 (August was 56.9%). Its count of active buyers, about 928,900, was the lowest on record, while roughly 1.51 million sellers was the most since March 2020. Forty-one of the 50 most populous metros were buyer’s markets, also a record. Miami led at 158.9% more sellers than buyers, followed by Nashville and Houston.

Redfin senior economist Asad Khan summed it up this way: “This is a buyer’s market born out of caution, not strength.” Buyers have leverage mostly because so many other would-be buyers have been priced out or scared off.

Memphis isn’t in Redfin’s 50-metro table, so there’s no official Redfin “buyer’s market” label for us this month. The closest local read comes from the National Association of Realtors’ September pending home sales report, released October 20:

• Contract signings fell 7.3% from August and 11.3% from a year earlier nationally.
• In the South, they fell 8.2% for the month and 12% for the year.
• Using Realtor.com data, NAR listed the Memphis metro’s pending sales at -6.3% year over year, the ninth-smallest decline among the 50 largest metros. Nashville had the smallest, at -2%.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun blamed the slowdown on borrowing costs: “Market conditions weakened in September due to fast-rising mortgage rates.” And NAR’s own coverage of the report cites Realtor.com data showing nearly 21% of active listings nationally had a price cut in September, the highest share for that month since 2018.

Read that Memphis number carefully. A smaller drop in contracts means our buyers pulled back less than buyers elsewhere did. It does not mean prices here are rising, and it doesn’t make Memphis a seller’s market. Fewer people still signed contracts this September than last.

Inside the city of Memphis itself, Redfin’s market data for September shows the same direction. The typical home took 45 days to sell, up from 37 a year earlier. Homes sold for about 95.9% of list price, and 39.6% of listings had a price drop. Redfin’s city-level pages for the suburbs weren’t accessible when we checked, so we’re not quoting Germantown or Collierville figures here. Ask us and we’ll pull them from the MLS for your exact subdivision.

The next NAR pending sales report, covering October, comes out November 18.

Our read on the east metro

Here’s where we land: most of the Memphis area is a buyer’s market this fall, and the exceptions are narrower than sellers in them want to believe.

The exceptions are real. Established streets in the strongest Germantown and Collierville school zones still list rarely, and a well-priced, move-in-ready house there can draw more than one offer. We wrote about why in our post on why boomers aren’t selling. Long-tenure owners with paid-off houses simply don’t list, so scarcity holds those prices up.

Step outside those pockets and the leverage flips. New construction in Arlington and Lakeland competes with builders who are carrying inventory and paying for buydowns and closing costs to move it. New-home prices are already at a five-year low, and a resale house a mile from a model home is competing against those incentives whether its owner likes it or not. Plenty of Bartlett and Cordova subdivisions with steady turnover look a lot like the national charts: longer days on market, more price cuts, more give on terms.

Price point splits things again. Higher-priced homes have been moving better than entry-level ones because their buyers lean on equity and are less rate-sensitive, which we broke down in the housing market split in two.

The most expensive mistake we’re seeing this fall belongs to sellers in ordinary, high-turnover subdivisions who price as if they lived on one of those locked-tight Germantown streets. They read “Memphis held up better than most” and hear “my price is safe.” It isn’t.

How to read your own micro-market

You don’t need a metro report to figure out which side has leverage. You need four numbers for homes like yours: same subdivision or school zone, similar size, similar price, sold in the last 90 days. Your agent can pull these in a few minutes.

Months of supply is the easy math. Count the active listings in your slice and divide by how many sold per month lately. Twelve on the market and three sales a month is four months, right on the line between seller-leaning and balanced.

Days on market needs more care, because one stale listing can skew it. Use the median, and compare it to the same months last year, since Memphis-area homes usually sell slower in November than in April. We did this for Germantown’s 50 days to pending earlier this year. Fifty days there meant steady. Fifty days on a starter-home street in a spring market would mean something’s wrong.

Price cuts are where sellers blink. If a third of the comparable listings have already reduced, the asking prices in that pocket were set for a market that’s gone.

Then sale-to-list. In the city of Memphis it was under 96% in September, about four dollars off every hundred.

When two of the four point the same way, the market’s leaning. All four, and you can negotiate (or price) accordingly.

If you’re buying

Leverage only helps if you use it, and a lot of buyers this fall are still writing offers like it’s 2022. If your micro-market reads buyer-friendly, ask for more than a lower price.

• Seller concessions toward closing costs. On a $400,000 house, 2% to 3% is $8,000 to $12,000 you don’t have to bring to the table.
• A rate buydown instead of a price cut. Seller money spent on lowering your rate often saves more per month than the same amount knocked off the price. Run both with your lender before you write.
• Real inspection asks. Go after the roof, the HVAC near the end of its life, the panel your insurer won’t like, and skip the cosmetic list. Our post on home inspection red flags covers which findings are worth negotiating.
• Listings that have sat 60 days and already cut once. That seller is ready to talk, and usually about more than price.

We go deeper on tactics, including appraisal gaps and countering, in our guide to real estate negotiation strategies.

One caution for east-metro buyers. In the handful of Germantown and Collierville pockets where homes still move in days, a lowball built on national headlines will just lose. Save the hard bargaining for the listings whose numbers say you’ve earned it.

If you’re selling

Price it right the first time. In a market with this many sellers, buyers compare your house to five others before they ever book a showing, and the first two weeks bring your largest audience. Miss with the opening number and you end up cutting later anyway, after the best buyers have moved on. We wrote a whole post on the pricing mistake that can cost you the sale.

Start with an honest valuation built on closed sales in your subdivision, not the neighbor’s asking price. A home value estimate gives you a starting point, and we’ll tighten it with the four numbers above.

Then decide how you’ll handle concessions before an offer shows up, because deciding in the middle of a negotiation is how sellers give away too much.

If you’re competing with new construction in Arlington or Lakeland, plan on concessions from day one. Buyers walking in from a model home have already been offered a buydown. Match it or price below it. Ignoring it just adds weeks.

If comparable listings around you are sitting and cutting, hold your concessions until a solid offer arrives and use them there. A $6,000 credit at the negotiating table costs you less than a $10,000 public price cut that every buyer and agent in the MLS sees.

And if you’re on one of the scarce school-zone streets and the numbers truly lean seller, you may not need concessions at all. Just make sure it’s the numbers saying so, and not a neighbor’s story about a bidding war in 2022.

Run the four numbers first

The national picture will keep changing, and this page will change with it every quarter. The method won’t. Before you write an offer or set a list price, pull months of supply, days on market, price cuts, and sale-to-list for homes like the one in front of you. That tells you more than any headline about Miami or Nashville.

If you’d like those numbers for a specific street in Germantown, Collierville, or anywhere else in the east metro, send us the address. We’ll tell you which way it leans and how we’d play it.