A condominium for sale in Salem in August. Estimates show the number of buyers in the Boston market are reaching parity with the number of homes for sale. iStock photo illustration

Massachusetts homebuyers will have more power in 2026, but concerns about the job market could minimize the impact, experts predict.

Toward the end of 2025, Massachusetts began to see inventory levels increase slightly across the state, especially in the Boston metropolitan area.

According to data compiled by economists at the brokerage Redfin, while new listings were dropping across the nation, Boston saw a 10.2 percent increase in the combined total of single-family and condo listings on the market. It was the largest gain among the 50 most populous U.S. metros for the four weeks ending Dec. 7, Redfin data shows.

The rising inventory can partly be attributed to sellers realizing the current mortgage interest rate environment is a “new normal,” said Massachusetts Association of Realtors 2026 President Kristen Keegan.

“I think people that were on the fence about whether or not to buy and whether or not to sell are saying this price range, this interest rate is pretty normal for today’s market. “I think that as people become more comfortable with our new normal, we’re starting to see more buyers and more sellers willing to make that move. It was tough for a while, because so many people refinanced and purchased during COVID.”

Sellers Still Outnumber Buyers – Barely

For an inventory-starved market like Massachusetts where buyers still face high levels of competition, even slight growth in the number of homes for sale can provide relief.

But a separate Redfin analysis published late last month estimated buyers still outnumber active listings and pending sales by a little over 7 percent in the Boston area, one of only 13 markets in the country where sellers still outnumber buyers.

That’s down from a 25.7 percent gap in November 2024 and a 41.8 percent gap in April 2022 at the height of the pandemic home-buying frenzy. It’s also much smaller than Redfin found in April 2019, when the state had 26.6 percent more buyers than sellers.

“I do think that buyers have more options,” Greater Boston Association of Realtors 2026 President Joselin Malkhasian said. “The buyers have a little bit more leverage than they once did, but I don’t think that sellers are desperate, like you would see in a true buyer’s market. It’s incredibly important for sellers to price correctly and to have a home professionally marketed, because there is a lot more competition.”

This will be new territory for many buyers who began looking or purchased homes in 2020. They now have the ability to be patient during the homebuying process without the fear of missing out, agents and brokers say.

Sellers became accustomed to receiving offers well over the asking price in prior years, but in the current market, homes are sitting longer, which can lead buyers to believe they can get a discount. According to MAR, the average time a single-family home spent on the market increased by 14.3 percent year-over-year, to 40 days in November.

Data from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors says single-family homes are spending 14.3 percent more time on the market. iStock photo illustration

Some Buyers Getting Aggressive

It’s even leading some buyers top think they can “lowball” sellers because properties remained on the market longer, said Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty agent Annie Bauman.

“I fielded a lot of low ball offers in quarter four, and it was fascinating, because I had sellers that really wanted to sell,” she said. “They were very motivated sellers, and willing to concede that they were not willing to give their property away and I think that’s why we saw so many sellers pull their home off the market because they didn’t have confidence in buyer activity in the fall. They’re capable of holding on for more reasonable activity and offer activity in the new year.”

The power relationships haven’t fully flipped. Buyers still risk overplaying their hand in negotiations, Malkhasian.

But buyers do have more tools at their disposal, according to Keegan.

“The buyer may have a home sale contingency versus two, three years ago, trying to get an offer accepted with that home sale contingency was very difficult,” she said. “Having offers with those types of contingencies, home inspections are normal again, and it’s good for buyers and sellers.”

Heading into 2026, real estate professionals interviewed for this story expressed optimism for buyers: Interest rates are on the decline and inventory is growing.

But the market is likely to move sideways rather than improve or decline, said appraiser and real estate market commentator Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel Inc..

“The thing is that when rates drift a little bit lower, it’s the early adopters that benefit the most, because when rates drift lower, that also causes sellers to price higher or be more firm in their negotiations,” he said. “As we look out into 2026 we’re anticipating lower mortgage rates, but not significantly lower. So the way I think of 2026 is that we’ll see slightly more transactions, we’ll see a little bit more inventory, and we’ll see a slight reduction in price growth.”

“Prices will continue to rise, but the added inventory and not overpowering demand will continue to make housing in some ways moving sideways,” he added.

The Economy a Wild Card

Right now, buyers might appear set to have more power in 2026, but the performance of the economy could limit their ability to wield it as the year unfolds.

The unemployment rate in Massachusetts was 4.6 percent in September, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. This represents an increase from 3.6 percent in September 2022 and a higher rate than the United States as a whole.

While Massachusetts has a diversified economy not tied to any one industry, some of its major tentpoles are under pressure or seeing layoffs, like higher education, insurance, software and the life sciences. And buyers could be forced to stop their search if job concerns arise.

“When a consumer is worried about their employment, they’re less likely to make the biggest purchase of their life,” Miller said. “What I’m hoping is that 2026, will be a lot more boring, a lot more mundane, a lot less volatile. That will bring more people into the market, as opposed to having sudden policy changes happen frequently, and businesses unable to plan for the future, which also means bringing in new employees, raising compensation, all those things that feed into the housing market.”

Sam Lattof

Even typically recession-resistant sectors like higher education and biomedical research are not impervious to an economic downturn. And even if job losses remain a threat only, the mere fear of layoffs can cause buyers to retreat.

“I can speak from my own experiences this year,” GBREB’s Malkhasian said. “A lot of my clients are in the biotech life sciences and in one week alone, I had four clients telling me that they had to pause their home search – not because layoffs happened, but because there was the threat of impending layoffs.”

But another Massachusetts market could also be able to withstand the downturn due to its clientele. Out on Cape Cod, buyers are far less likely to be impacted by unemployment compared to the average homebuyer in the rest of Massachusetts.

“On the Cape in particular, generally speaking we aren’t as impacted by unemployment rates,” Cape Cod & Island Association of Realtors CEO Betsy Hanson said. “Most of our price points are higher . We look at a lot of cash buyers that maybe don’t exist in other markets, or people that this is a second property, so they’re a little bit insulated from that.”