Lew Sichelman
There’s been a jump in the number of houses hitting the market in recent weeks. Hidden among them, there are likely some reasonably priced gems listed by owners willing to negotiate with interested buyers.
Many homes fitting that description are relistings: houses that had been listed previously, but were taken off the market because the owners couldn’t get their asking prices.
Delistings, the counterparts of relistings, surged during the second half of 2025. Every month since June, according to Realtor.com, some 6 percent of active listings nationwide were yanked off the market – the highest rate since the metric was introduced in 2022.
Now, some of those sellers are coming back – and with a different mindset. Toward the end of January, relistings accounted for 11 percent of the houses for sale nationwide, Compass economist Mike Simonsen reports. That works out to nearly 76,500 places that are now back on the market.
After experiencing months of showings, price cuts and stalled negotiations, frustrated sellers are more willing to bend on prices, concessions and repairs, said Lance Lambert, founder of real estate research firm ResiClub.
Moreover, relistings give buyers “an information advantage,” writes Lambert in an article on FastCompany.com. Buyers can find the prior list price, concessions that may have been offered, how many days the places were on the market and whether any earlier contracts fell apart. Armed with this knowledge, buyers can ensure their offers are tied to “true market-clearing levels.”
“Savvy buyers – and their agents – should always do their homework and confirm whether a property was listed in the prior year, how pricing evolved, and why it didn’t sell, as that context can materially strengthen negotiating leverage,” he wrote.
How Much to Build a Home?
How much does it cost to build a house?
Surprisingly, the “sticks and bricks” of the typical house in 2024 were responsible for 64 percent of the cost, the National Association of Home Builders reports. The finished building site was the second-largest cost, at nearly 14 percent.
Building costs were broken down into eight major stages of construction: interior finishes (24.1 percent), major system rough-ins (19.2 percent), framing (16.6 percent), exterior finishes (13.4 percent), foundations (10.5 percent), site work (7.6 percent), final steps (6.5 percent), and other costs (2.1 percent).
Builders pocketed an average of 11 percent in profit, NAHB reports.
Locked in, No More
Time is slowly eroding the so-called “lock-in effect,” in which current homeowners don’t want to give up their low-rate mortgages.
There were already a large percentage of loans below 4 percent prior to the pandemic. And by the first quarter of 2022, 65 percent were below 4 percent. Nearly 86 percent were below 5 percent.
But as of last year’s third quarter, data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency show that 51.5 percent of active mortgages are below 4 percent, and 68.6 percent are under 5 percent.
On the flip side, the percentage of mortgages over 6 percent increased by more than 4 percent between the third quarters of 2024 and 2025.
Some Credit Repair Firms File False Reports
Beware of so-called experts who say you can improve your credit score by filing a false report of identity theft.
Not only is doing so “a crime that could get you a fine, imprisonment or both,” per a post on the Federal Trade Commission’s website, but it would also leave your credit worse off than before.
Scammers claiming they can repair your credit may encourage you to dispute information in your credit report that you know is correct. They’ll also push you to pay them in advance, tell you to lie on loan or credit applications, and discourage you from contacting the credit bureaus directly.
Legally, credit repair outfits cannot remove information from your credit file if it’s up-to-date and accurate. In fact, it’s illegal for credit repair companies to lie about what they can do, or charge you before they help you.
Credit repair companies must explain your legal rights in a written contract that details the services they’ll perform, how long it will take to get results, and the total cost you’ll pay. They must also explain your three-day right to cancel without any charge and provide you with a cancellation form.
In short, anything a credit repair company can do legally, you can do on your own at little or no cost. The best way to improve your credit is to show, over time, that you pay your debts punctually.
Lew Sichelman has been covering real estate for more than 50 years. He is a regular contributor to numerous shelter magazines and housing and housing-finance industry publications. Readers can contact him at lsichelman@aol.com.
