Buyers have the upper hand in every major metro — except one

If you needed another sign that buyers have the upper hand, here it is: just one of the top 20 metros in the fourth quarter saw homes trade above asking prices.

The outlier in the fourth quarter of 2025 was San Francisco, where the average sale-to-list ratio in the fourth quarter was 104.7 percent according to an analysis of data from brokerage and research firm Redfin. The firm calculates the ratio by dividing a home’s final price by its last listing price. Anything above 100 means homes sold above ask. 

The pandemic led to a homebuying spree that put sellers in the driver’s seat. In the fourth quarter of 2020, there were nine top-20 markets with average sale-to-list ratios above 100 percent; a year later, there were 12. This fell precipitously in the fourth quarter of 2022, when just two markets — San Francisco and Boston — were left standing with more homes selling above ask. That’s been the general trend since.

San Francisco has long ranked among the country’s least affordable and most competitive housing markets, and the numbers suggest demand remains resilient. In the fourth quarter of last year, the median home price rose 3.6 percent year over year to $1.5 million, sales climbed roughly 12 percent, and homes moved in an average of 70 days — six days faster than a year earlier.

Elsewhere, buyers had more negotiating power. Miami posted the lowest sale-to-list ratio among the top 20 metros, with homes trading for about 95 percent of their asking price on average, down 0.6 percent than a year earlier. Properties also lingered; homes spent 281 days on the market, up by 17 days from the prior year. However, in the fourth quarter, the median home price was relatively flat, edging down just 0.5 percent year over year to $550,000.

Nationally, the average sale-to-list ratio in the fourth quarter was 98.4 percent, down 0.1 percent year over year.

Among all of the metropolitan areas in the country that Redfin had data for in the fourth quarter — 887 of them — 5.5 percent of them had a sale-to-list ratio at or above asking prices. That was close to, though a bit higher than, the breakdown for the fourth quarter of 2024.