In the US housing market, sellers are desperate.

Amid an enormous imbalance favoring buyer leverage, over 34% of sellers cut prices in February, data released late this week showed.

That was the highest share for any February on record. Remember: Housing market seasonality demands “month-specific,” so to speak, comparisons. Hold that thought.

There’s the chart. Redfin’s data on this particular metric goes back to 2012. Note that in February of 2022, a month before the Fed started raising rates, this share was less than 11%.

Pervasive discounts are a function of a record mismatch between buyers and sellers, with the latter outnumbering the former by almost 50%. As Redfin’s Lily Katz noted, among those who sold at a discount in February the average price cut was more than $40,000.

From the seller side, you’re least likely to be forced into a price cut if you sell in May, at the height of the spring buying season, and most likely to be compelled to offer a discount if you sell in December. The trend starts to move decisively in sellers’ favor beginning in February.

For context, discounts were nearly as (or more) prevalent in February of 2026 than they were in December of 2024, 2023 and 2022.

Here’s the kicker: It seems likely that price cuts will be more pervasive in April and May of this year than any November or December pre-pandemic. As the figure below shows, that was the case last year too.

If we see a repeat in 2026 (i.e., if the share of sellers offering discounts is again higher during spring buying season than during pre-pandemic winters), the White House will have itself to blame for undermining a nascent recovery by starting a war. A war that pushed mortgage rates back up and torpedoed consumer confidence.

“A lot of people who couldn’t sell their homes last year opted to delist instead of reducing the price, with a plan to relist this spring because they knew that would give them a better chance of selling,” a Boston area agent told Katz.

Those sellers probably didn’t factor war with Iran into their plans. Gang aft agley.