Photo courtesy of CCIAOR
Steve Seaver
2026 President, Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors and Sales Manager, Kinlin Grover Compass
Industry experience: 13 years
Is it still a seller’s market if there’s less than two months of inventory, but sellers are only getting 94 percent of list price? Steve Seaver is grappling with that question as the 2026 president of the Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors. As buyers gain more power, but state regulations constrict what concessions sellers can offer, the market is partly responding with price concessions, the Brewster-based Kinlin Grover Compass sales manager said. Either way, sellers are having to work harder to make their homes seem worth it, or price them well if they want to see multiple offers.
Q: How active have buyers been on Cape Cod to start 2026?
A: I look at January 2026 on the Cape, and it feels like a continuation of the trends that we were seeing throughout 2025 in that we’re not growing inventory of homes for sale. New listings on the market have continued to be slow. In January, in all of Cape Cod, we had 138 new listings. Well, a year ago, in a slow market, we had 189. That’s a 27 percent reduction year-on-year in new listings coming on to the market. It’s not like 2025 in January was a robust market. We’re still in this historical timeframe of low inventory. The trends are either flat or slightly declining sales volume – talking about single family homes for the most part – but prices continuing to increase single digits year on year. So, it’s not as though the lower activity is leading to any relief in prices.
And buyers, they are taking their time. [For] the right house in the right neighborhood, priced correctly, there’s still a volume of buyers out there, but they’re not surfacing as readily as they did for all properties. So they’re being more cautious, is my point. They’re looking more for deals. They’re netting about the same success in terms of percentage of original list price that they’re securing. It’s not like that’s gone up or down in the last year. It’s pretty flat for the Cape as a whole. It’s about 94 percent of original list price.
There’s not heavy discounting. Sellers aren’t panicking, but it’s a more balanced market in the price negotiation leading to that 94 percent than the volume of inventory versus buyer demand would suggest there should be. I mean, it’s still very much a seller’s market from an inventory standpoint, but the sellers don’t have the power that they did a couple of years ago, so they need to price carefully up front to get solid activity. Never mind the 10 offers and the 75 people that showed up to an open house Saturday. But if you just price it intelligently, you’ll get feedback. If sellers are still thinking it’s a seller’s market and they’re suggesting a premium for their home, the buyers aren’t showing up for that at all.
Q: In terms of the winter season, do you feel that the Cape is more seriously impacted considering the buyer and considering the properties that are being bought?
A: It’s such a second home market, discretionary purchase market, that we see that lull typically in the off-season. January was a terrible-weather month, so it’s going to be interesting to see what February looks like and what March looks like. Pending sales in January were down 6 percent versus last year. For single family, closed sales were down 16 percent versus last January. The trends may be negative, but not that negative, and the weather kind of kicked it a little more to the curb than it would have. Yet prices went up 5 percent from a median price of $745,000, to $783,500. So there’s health on the pricing part of it. I just wonder if February is going to see a diminishing of those negative trends. I don’t know if it will flip positive.
Q: Are buyers able to get concessions, or are we still seeing sellers have concessions on their end?
A: You look at it two ways. If there’s less than two months’ supply of inventory on the market, that’s not a balanced market by statistics. It’s supposed to be five or six months of inventory. We haven’t seen that in forever. So, is it a balanced market now, with three-and-a-half months of inventory? Does the definition change based on behavioral changes? The biggest concession to a buyer, of course, is what can they get off of the list price. We’re seeing that kind of settle in at about 94 percent versus the higher numbers a couple of years ago. So, they have a little negotiating strength.
The other thing that I find interesting is that now that the home inspection contingency, for all practical purposes, has been taken out of the negotiation, it’s one less concession that a seller can demand of a buyer. They have to allow the buyer to do the home inspection unless they opt out after they’re under contract, so it limits the concessions that a buyer can offer to a seller. They can’t [preemptively waive their right to an inspection] anymore, and you can’t do a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, I’m going to do the home inspection, but we’re really not going to do it. You can’t do that. That’s against the law, so it then causes clients and Realtors to be a little more creative in terms of what they’re asking for sellers’ concessions – like closing costs, depending on the different circumstances.
As I mentioned earlier, financing is now part of almost 70 percent of the deal. The seller might wish for that to go away, but it’s the reality of how people are funding these purchases. So, if you assume that financing is going to be a contingency, and you can’t kick the home inspection contingency away, buyers and their agents have to be more creative and sellers have to be more creative as to, how am I going to get that buyer to find my home most appealing? What concessions may I be willing to offer?
Seaver’s Five Favorite Cape Cod Restaurants
- Beacon Room, Orleans
- Baleine, Dennis
- Old Yarmouth Inn, Yarmouth Port
- The Chatham Squire, Chatham
- The Brewster Fish House, Brewster
