Are there upsides to this summer’s slow housing market?

SALT LAKE CITY — There are deals to be made in this year’s late summer housing market, when many buyers are making a final push to find a new home before school starts and sellers are feeling more pressure on prices, real estate professionals say.

“For buyers, this is a great time just because you are getting sellers who maybe were trying to sell at a premium this spring” but now realize the already slow market is winding down, Utah Association of Realtors President-elect Aaron Drussel said Tuesday.

“You are seeing price adjustments happening,” he said. “You are seeing sellers become more motivated. The fear is moving into the fall, and then, before you know it, it’s going to be the holidays and winter. For some sellers, the concern is, ‘Am I going to miss the selling season?'”

Still, some buyers hesitate amid the economic uncertainty fueled by the ongoing war in Iran that is driving up mortgage rates. Already this week, Drussel said a client set to buy a home under construction was having second thoughts.

What he advised his client is that “the cost is going to go up. I mean, the cost of construction isn’t coming down. The cost of labor isn’t coming down. The market has a lot of pent-up demand.”

Another client may have gotten a taste of where the market may be headed when he made what Drussel said was a competitive offer on a Lehi home priced some $25,000 above what nearby properties had recently sold for but still lost out to a buyer willing to pay more.

While the home still sold for less than the asking price of around $600,000, Drussel said it’s a reminder that there are still buyers out there who are ready to spend even as others remain on the sidelines.

Scott Colemere, president of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, compared the annual peaks of the housing market to a two-humped camel, with a big bump in activity coming in the spring, followed by another in late summer.

“You see people wanting to make decisions before school starts or before school gets too far in,” Colemere said. “What I see in late summer is buyers coming back from distractions, summer vacations, family trips, kids’ summer sports, buckling down.”

Buyers who’ve waited until now are on the lookout for sellers who’ve misjudged market conditions and are realizing they may no longer be able to hold out for a higher price if they want to make a sale.

That’s probably more likely to happen this year, given that Utah buyers have an edge. To date, Colemere said he’s only had one transaction in 2026 where a buyer paid full price, and that was one of his listings. Everything else, he said, has been discounted.

“What it tells me,” he said, “is that our market is a healthier market where buyers and sellers acting in their own best interests are competing and trying to push each other for the best price they can get.”

Another sign of what Colemere said is still a “recovery market” that favors buyers is the amount of time homes typically spend on the market, currently about 45 to 47 days. In a “very balanced market,” that number would be 30 to 40 days.

The situation is the same in much of the rest of the country, according to the online real estate brokerage Redfin, which declared in a post that the “U.S. housing market has settled into a slower pace this summer,” forcing sellers, in many cases, to cut prices or even offer concessions.

“Late summer — especially this one when the housing market favors buyers in most places — offers the chance for people who are motivated to move this year to negotiate,” Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economics research, said in the post.

Her tips for the remaining days of summer? “Buyers should use this time to explore the market more seriously, while sellers should consider what they’re willing to sacrifice to make a deal happen,” Zhao said.