If you don’t own property in America by now, chances are you can’t afford to.

It’s also possible you just aren’t interested, but in most cases that disinterest, even if it’s genuine, is at least in part a function of the affordability hurdle.

(I’m genuinely disinterested in a Revuelto, but I’d be lying if I said my aesthetic preference for smooth curves versus sharp lines is the main reason I chose Affalterbach instead of Sant’Agata Bolognese when it came to furnishing my garage.)

If you’re the exception — i.e., if you’re that family with perfect credit, a six-figure cash down payment and a quarter-million or better annual income who doesn’t yet own a home — you have a ton of leverage right now. Or at least that’s what the buyer-seller imbalance suggests.

The latest data from Redfin, released this week, showed sellers outnumbered buyers by more than 46% last month, yet another new record.

The chart above, updated with the latest figures and historical revisions, shows you the extent to which today’s dynamic is a 180-degree turn from the situation that prevailed during the pandemic housing boom, when buyers outnumbered sellers by as much as 36%.

If you’re wondering about “the numbers behind the numbers,” so to speak, Redfin’s Lily Katz counted 629,808 more sellers than buyers across the US housing market last month.

Katz defines a buyer’s market as any scenario where sellers predominate by more than 10%.

There’s the numerical breakdown: 1,989,027 sellers to 1,359,219 buyers.

So, this isn’t just a buyer’s market, it’s a historic opportunity to secure discounts. There’s just one problem. Two, actually.

First, sellers haven’t accepted the fact that the party’s over, and are thus reluctant to cut prices commensurate with what the imbalance illustrated above appears to demand. They can hardly be blamed: An imbalance of that magnitude suggests price cuts so large that many sellers would be forced to take a loss, something almost no one will do. Hence a frozen resale market.

Second — and this brings us full circle — this only matters if you have the cash, credit and income to buy property. As Katz put it this week, repeating verbatim what she may or may not realize is an example of editorial perfection, “it’s only a buyer’s market for those who can afford to buy.”