January 2026 DFW Housing Market Update: Buyer Discounts at 7.3% and Sellers Waiting 74 Days to Sell!

by Kiel Lindsey

If you’re selling your house in DFW right now, you need to be aware of a few very important stats.

Buyers are getting about a 7.3% discount off the original list price.
The average days on market is 74 days.

This isn’t a sign that you need to panic, it means you need to adjust your expectations, and make sure you have a strategy to match it. This market is absolutely punishing sellers who price like it’s still peak-seller-season.

I’m Kiel Lindsey, Your Property Geek. I break down what the numbers actually mean so you can buy smarter and sell stronger in North Fort Worth, Haslet, Saginaw, and Keller.

Quick Market Snapshot (The 8 Numbers I’m Watching)

These are the headline stats from this update:

Sale-to-original-list: 92.7% or a “discount” of ~7.3%
Total homes for sale: just over 40,394 (up 0.7% YoY)
New listings last month: 9,511 (down 0.5% YoY)
Closings last month: 9,667 (and higher than new listings)
Average days on market: 74 (up 10.4% YoY)
Pending sales: 7,256 (up 3.8% YoY)
Shows per listing: 3 (down 3.2% YoY)
Shows to Pending: 14.1 (up 2.9% YoY)
Months of supply: 4.1 (down 2.4% YoY)

This gives you a quick overview of the stats, stick with me as I dive deeper into each one and explain how they actually affect you as a buyer or seller.

Supply: Inventory Is High, Even If It Dipped From Summer

Total homes for sale

Since the peak in July, the total number of homes for sale dropped by almost 15,000.
Even after that seasonal drop, we are still sitting at just over 40,000 homes for sale, which is higher than this time last year.

You can feel what that does in real life. Buyers have options. Sellers do not get automatic leverage anymore.

Why inventory moved

Inventory is basically a tug-of-war between:

New listings coming on,
Closings taking listings off, and
Failed Listings that either expired, or cancelled.

New listings are seasonal. We peaked earlier in the year at 20,287 in April, then dropped to 9,511 last month.

Closings are seasonal too. We had about 9,667 closings last month, which is up from November, but still down from the peak in May of this year which was 11,617 closings.

You can see an interesting trend with these two stats that happens when you remove seasonality by making each point 12 months worth of data (not the perfect way to do this, but it gets the general idea across). What you can see is that new listings have been rising sharply over the last few years (up 7.6% YoY, and up 22.5% from 2 years ago) , while closed sales have struggled to keep up, but have been rising (up 0.9% YoY and up 2.8% from 2 years ago).

What does this mean? This is showing us that the market health is slowly recovering, but still has some work to do. We want to see closed sales growing, but at a pace that more closely matches the new listings. If you divide the number of new listings by the closed sales you get a simple ratio showing how many times more new listings than closed sales there are.

This ratio normally peaks in the spring as more sellers are putting their houses on the market, but the buyers aren’t quite ready for the summer buying season. This March we peaked at around 1.98 times more new listings than closed sales (up 14.5% YoY), but the trend this year has been going down significantly, and last month we were at 1.35 times new listings to closed sales (up 0.7% YoY).

Days on market

Average days on market is 74, which is pushing two and a half months to get under contract. That’s up 10.4% year over year. This is a significant increase and the trend is getting worse for sellers.

Translation. If you list and wait for “the perfect buyer,” the market will happily let your home sit there.

Demand: Buyers Are Picky, Not Gone

Demand is not just “how many people say they want a house.” It’s how many are actually making offers and following through.

Pending sales (buyer intent)

Pending sales were 7,256 last month, which is up 3.8% YoY. Pending sales matter because they show offers getting accepted, not just casual browsing. This is a good sign of where the market is headed.

Shows per listing (buyer pool)

We’re at 3 shows per listing. That’s down 3.2% from last year. This is measuring an average of total showings divided by total active listings and is a great barometer on how many buyers are actually out there viewing houses. In other words, this is our current buyer pool out looking.

Fewer showings per listing usually means one of two things:

Buyers are stretched on affordability, or
Buyers have so many choices they skip anything that is overpriced or “meh.”

Shows-to-pending (how hard it is to get an offer)

Shows-to-pending is 14.1, up 2.9% from last year. That means it takes more showings to generate an accepted offer.

Pricing: Prices Are Flat. Seller Expectations Are Not.

Pricing overall is interesting, because it looks like prices have been flat or dropping, but the marketwide data shows some upward movement.

Sellers are still pushing list prices up

When you look at the original list price (seasonality removed), it keeps trending up (up 2.3% YoY). Sellers are still trying to push prices forward. But the average sales prices are down slightly (down 0.1% YoY).

That gap creates the pain.

Buyers are negotiating harder.
Homes that miss the pricing window end up doing price cuts, concessions, or both.

Buyers are getting bigger discounts than ever before

The average sales price to original list price has dropped to 92.7%, which is down 1.4% YoY. This equates to buyers getting a 7.3% discount from where sellers originally list their home at. In other words, if you listed your house for $450,000, you would expect to sell it at $417,150, or a $32,850 discount.

National Context (Why This Is Not Just a DFW Thing)

Two big national themes showed up in December 2025:

Inventory is improving year over year, even though it still drops seasonally month to month. Realtor.com reported active listings were up 12.1% YoY in December, with prices easing and homes taking longer to sell. (Realtor)
The market is closer to “balanced” than the last few years, with months of supply sitting in the mid-4s in Redfin’s national weekly data. (Redfin)

That lines up with what we feel locally. Buyers are value-hunting. Sellers have to earn their price.

Local Context Add-On: What MetroTex Reported for December 2025

MetroTex’s December 2025 housing report (as reported by DFW Agent Magazine) adds helpful DFW-specific context:

Median price: $375,000 (down 6.3% YoY) (DFW Agent Magazine)
Closed sales: 7,704 (up 3% YoY) (DFW Agent Magazine)
Active listings: 27,041 (up 9% YoY) (DFW Agent Magazine)
Months of inventory: 3.5 (DFW Agent Magazine)
Typical time on market: 103 days total (71 days active plus 32 to close) (DFW Agent Magazine)

If those numbers don’t match the broader “40,000+ homes for sale” stat above, that can be normal. Different reports can use different market boundaries and definitions. The useful part is the trend. Inventory is higher, homes are taking longer, and buyers have leverage.

Takeaways for Buyers: How to Win Without Overpaying

1) Target stale listings on purpose

If you’re a buyer, my advice is to focus on homes that have been on the market 60 to 90 days or more.
Those sellers are more likely to negotiate because reality has set in. This is where buyers are winning with better contract terms and sellers that are more willing to agree on repairs.

2) Negotiate the “hidden” money

Price is not the only lever. The real wins often come from:

Seller concessions (closing costs)
Repairs
Rate buydowns (when available)

I recently helped a buyer negotiate a seller concession of $14,400 that they’ll use toward closing costs (max allowed in that scenario), plus major functional repairs like roof and HVAC. This buyer will be able to close with an affordable payment and almost no money out of pocket.

3) Use the market to protect your future resale

Buy the home that will be easy to resell later. That usually means:

Great layout and condition
Solid location
No “weird” dealbreakers buyers hate

If you want help running a clean negotiation game plan, book a free Buyer Blueprint Meeting.

Takeaways for Sellers: Protect Your Net, Not Your Ego

1) You are competing with “options,” not “buyers”

Your biggest competition is not the house down the street. It is every other decent option a buyer can go tour tomorrow. Buyers have more options than ever in DFW and your house needs to offer more value than ever to attract buyers.

2) Pricing like it’s 2022 is expensive

The market is handing out a lesson right now. If you price like it’s still a peak-seller-market, you risk sitting, chasing the market with reductions, and giving up leverage later. Remember, the average discount is 7.3%, some sellers are giving away way more than that, you don’t want that to be you.

3) If you are stale, consider the reset

If you’ve been on the market 60 to 90+ days, it might be time to pause and reset:

Pull the listing
Do the small repairs you’ve been avoiding
Restage
Take new photos
Relaunch for the spring window

It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s also a time-tested way to stop bleeding value.

If you want a no-pressure plan, book a free Home Selling Blueprint Meeting.

Your Next Step (If You Want Clarity Fast)

If you’re thinking about buying or selling in North Fort Worth, Haslet, Saginaw, or Keller, I’ll help you map the smartest move with real numbers and a clean plan.

Buyers: Book a free Buyer Blueprint Meeting.
Sellers: Book a free Home Selling Blueprint Meeting.
Want a quick starting point. Request a free AI-powered home valuation and I’ll help you interpret it like a human.

Book a Strategy Call: https://calendar.app.google/VvvPV23ZnqrfSqMR8

Not quite ready for a call yet? Get a free AI-powered home value estimate instantly here: https://yourpropertygeek.com/evaluation

FAQs

Is DFW a buyer’s market in January 2026?

DFW is not a pure buyer’s market across the board, but buyers have noticeably more leverage than peak years. Months of supply is around 4.1 in this update, and the market tends to be called “neutral” around 6 months.

Are home prices dropping in DFW right now?

Broadly, pricing is closer to flat than falling in the transcript’s DFW-wide view. Average sales price was basically unchanged year over year (about -0.1%).
Some local reports (like MetroTex) showed a lower median in December 2025. (DFW Agent Magazine)

How long does it take to sell a home in DFW?

In the transcript’s market-wide snapshot, average days on market was 74.
Other local reports may show different totals depending on how they count active time plus contract-to-close.

Are mortgage rates trending down going into 2026?

Rates dipped in December 2025 in the data referenced in the video, and Freddie Mac’s weekly survey showed the 30-year fixed at 6.15% on December 31, 2025, which was the lowest reading in 2025 in that survey.

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