Ranking the top 100 U.S. metros by buyer leverage

Buyer leverage is strongest in West Coast tech hubs and California markets that overheated during the pandemic boom, according to Bankrate's analysis. Buyer leverage is weakest across the Rust Belt and Midwestern cities, where inventory remains tight, and seller power has held firm.

Bankrate’s Buyer Opportunity Index scored the 100 largest U.S. metro areas across four key metrics: housing supply, discounted listings (the percentage of for-sale homes in an area that have cut their asking price), the median time homes sit unsold, and the median sale-to-list ratio. It then ranked each according to their relative market strength (100 is the strongest buyer’s market, 1 is the weakest) and compared how those rankings shifted from 2022 to 2026.
Chart: InmanSource: BankrateGet the data Download imageCreated with Datawrapper