By Brenden Rendo, Realtor · Updated September 23, 2026
Every week someone asks me a version of the same question: is it finally a buyer's market? It is a fair question, because the headline numbers look like one. Sellers across Orange, Seminole, Lake and Volusia counties cut asking prices on 1,552 homes in the seven days ending September 21, 2026. More than half of everything currently listed is already priced below where it started. That is not a subtle shift. But the label is the wrong thing to chase, because the honest answer is that Central Florida is running two markets at once, and which one you are standing in decides whether you have leverage or none at all.
- 1,552 price cuts hit Orange, Seminole, Lake and Volusia in the week ending September 21, 2026, and 54.3% of all 13,510 active listings are already below their original asking price.
- The median cut is small: 2.37% to 2.63% depending on the county. That is a correction, not a collapse.
- Central Florida is running two markets at once. Correctly priced, updated homes in good school zones still go under contract in days with no negotiating room. Overpriced homes sit past 60 days, and that is where every dollar of buyer leverage is.
- Buyers on Reddit describe exactly this split, including one Orange County buyer who got $29,000 of total value off a $465,000 list price by combining a price reduction with seller-paid closing costs.
- Rates are quietly eating the discount. The move from 6.76% to 6.95% in one week costs about $8,200 of purchasing power at Orange County's median asking price, roughly 80% of the typical price cut.
- Why "buyer's market" is the wrong question
- The four-county numbers as of September 21
- What Central Florida buyers and sellers are actually saying
- The two-tier market, and how to tell which tier you are in
- Rates just ate most of your discount
- What to do with this: buyers, sellers, investors
- Frequently asked questions
Why "buyer's market" is the wrong question
The phrase has a technical definition. Count the homes for sale, divide by the pace of sales, and if the result is more than about six months of supply, the convention calls it a buyer's market. You can track the national version of that series through the National Association of Realtors existing-home sales statistics.
Here is the problem with using it as a decision tool. A months-of-supply number is an average across tens of thousands of homes, and there is no such thing as an average home. It tells you nothing about the specific 3-bedroom in Oviedo you want, or the specific listing in Lake Mary that has been sitting since June. A single metro-wide label flattens a market that is behaving in two completely different ways depending on the listing.
So I am going to answer a more useful question instead: where in Central Florida does a buyer actually have negotiating power right now, and what does it take to get it?
The four-county numbers as of September 21
These come from a Stellar MLS pull generated September 21, 2026, covering Orange, Seminole, Lake and Volusia counties only.
| County | Active listings | Median asking price | Median days on market | Price cuts, 7 days | Median cut | 60+ days on market | Below original price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orange | 5,710 | $429,000 | 45 | 653 | 2.37% | 41.7% | 52.5% |
| Seminole | 1,670 | $390,000 | 42 | 228 | 2.56% | 39.3% | 56.6% |
| Lake | 3,112 | $389,900 | 50 | 339 | 2.63% | 44.9% | 53.6% |
| Volusia | 3,018 | $369,000 | 51 | 332 | 2.54% | 44.8% | 56.9% |
| Four-county total | 13,510 | See note | See note | 1,552 | 2.37% to 2.63% | 42.9% | 54.3% |
Note: medians do not add across counties, so the total row reports counts and shares only. Shares in the total row are computed from the underlying counts: 5,790 of 13,510 listings past 60 days, 7,332 of 13,510 below original price.
Two things jump out. First, this is broad. It is not one county dragging the average around. Every one of the four counties shows roughly 39% to 45% of inventory sitting past 60 days and 52% to 57% already discounted. Seminole has the shortest median days on market at 42 and still has 56.6% of its listings below original price, which tells you that sellers there listed high and corrected rather than that the county is slow.
Second, the cuts are small. A median reduction of 2.37% to 2.63% on a $400,000 home is roughly $9,500 to $10,500. That is a seller adjusting, not a seller capitulating. Anyone selling you a story about a Florida crash is not looking at these numbers. If you want the longer view on how deep the stale end of the market runs, I broke out the 90-day cohort by county and price band in the stale-listings analysis.
What Central Florida buyers and sellers are actually saying
I pulled 83 posts and threads from the last 30 days across Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Hacker News to see what the conversation looks like outside of MLS data. The first finding is about the conversation itself: the volume is overwhelmingly agents talking about price cuts rather than buyers and sellers talking to each other. The most useful consumer discussion was on Reddit, where people describe the market in far more specific terms than any headline does.
A buyer in the r/orlando house-hunting thread put the split better than most market reports:
"If the place is priced right, it will go super fast. I bought a few months ago, 4 days on the market and we competed against 2 other full ask offers. But also there is lots of delusional sellers that are way overpriced and that inventory sits and rots. If it's priced well, you won't have much negotiating power. If it has been sitting, you might be able to go under ask and get concessions"u/BVB09_FL, r/orlando, August 15, 2026
Another buyer in the same thread described the inventory that is left behind after the good listings clear:
"I've been watching closely. Anything of fair value goes quickly (probably to flippers) and most remaining homes are being listed at 'I'm not really trying to sell but if you're willing to pay this much I will' prices."u/soscribbly, r/orlando, August 15, 2026
A homeowner in the Oviedo area, in Seminole County, gave a concrete example of what happens to a listing that starts too high:
"a house near me was listed at 720, within 3 weeks it fell to 615 and ended up selling for 590, which I as still a bit high for that house, imo"u/UCFCO2001, r/orlando, August 15, 2026
That is an 18% gap between the list price and the sale price, and it happened in a neighborhood the same commenter described as high demand with sought-after schools. Both things are true at once. That is the whole story of this market.
On the seller side, the sentiment in a September thread on r/RealEstateAdvice from a Florida homeowner four months into a listing with almost no showings drew a blunt and repeated diagnosis from commenters:
"It's always the price."u/Cali_kink_and_rope, r/RealEstateAdvice, September 14, 2026
The dominant thread running through all of it: almost nobody thinks prices are broadly falling, and almost everybody thinks overpriced homes are being ignored. That is a market correcting list prices, not values.
The two-tier market, and how to tell which tier you are in
Every number above points the same direction. There is a fast tier and a stuck tier, and they barely interact.
The fast tier is a correctly priced, updated home in a school zone people want. It goes under contract in days, sometimes with competing offers, and a buyer who writes it under asking will lose it. Nothing in the 1,552 weekly price cuts helps you here. As one buyer who attended 85 open houses across the city put it, "Anything priced well in a good school area went pending within a week or two" (u/EuphoricElderberry73, r/orlando, August 16, 2026).
The stuck tier is the 5,790 listings past 60 days. These are homes that launched at a 2022 number, watched the summer go by, and have now taken one or two small cuts that still are not enough. Sellers here are carrying a mortgage, insurance, taxes and often a second housing payment. Every month that passes moves them closer to a deal.
Here is what the stuck tier paid out for one Orange County buyer this year, in their own words:
"We bought in May. In Orlando, right by the ocoee line. House was listed for $465k. We negotiated it down to $455k and had the seller cover the entirety of our closing and realtor costs. Came out to about $19k in concessions."u/Plenty_Pie_7427, r/orlando, August 15, 2026
Add it up: $10,000 off the price plus roughly $19,000 in seller-paid costs is about $29,000 of total value, or 6.24% of the original $465,000 list price. That is more than double the median price cut, and most of it came from concessions rather than from the price itself.
Rates just ate most of your discount
This is the part the price-cut headlines leave out. According to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, the average 30-year fixed rate went from 6.76% the week of September 10 to 6.95% the week of September 17. Nineteen basis points in seven days.
Run that against Orange County's $429,000 median asking price with 20% down, which is a $343,200 loan. Principal and interest goes from about $2,228 a month at 6.76% to about $2,272 at 6.95%. That is roughly $44 more per month for the same house.
Now work backward. To get that $44 a month back at 6.95%, you would need the price to fall about $8,200. The median price cut in Orange County is 2.37%, or about $10,167 on that same home. So one week of rate movement erased roughly 80% of the typical seller price reduction.
None of this is a prediction about where rates go next. I covered how the 30-year has been tracking the bond market in the Treasury yield analysis, and the honest conclusion there is the same as here: nobody can tell you what next week does. What you can do is price the home in front of you at the rate available today.
What to do with this: buyers, sellers, investors
If you are buying. Your leverage is not distributed evenly, so stop looking for it evenly. Build your search around the 42.9% of inventory sitting past 60 days and ignore the price-cut alerts on fresh listings. Ask for concessions before you ask for a price reduction, because at 6.95% a seller credit toward a rate buydown moves your payment further than the same dollars off the price. And if you find something in the fast tier, understand that you are competing, and write accordingly. Start with the county price-reduction pages: Orange, Seminole, Lake and Volusia.
If you are selling. Look at your own listing honestly. If you are past 60 days you are in the tier buyers are hunting in, and every small cut you take that does not clear the market costs you another month of carrying costs while signaling that more cuts are coming. Sellers who priced correctly at launch are still going under contract in days in all four counties. The median days on market is 42 in Seminole and 45 in Orange, which is not a frozen market. Start with what your home is actually worth today, not what it was worth in 2022: run the numbers with the home value estimator, then let me put real comparable sales behind it.
If you are investing. The 5,790 listings past 60 days are your pipeline, but the small median cut tells you most sellers are not distressed yet, so expect to work through many properties to find one that pencils. Watch the gap between original and current list price as your motivation signal, and watch carrying costs, because Central Florida insurance and taxes decide the deal more often than purchase price does. Condo and townhouse inventory behaves differently from single-family and needs its own analysis.
The broader picture across all four counties, updated regularly, lives on the Central Florida housing market hub.
Frequently asked questions
Is Central Florida a buyer's market right now?
Partly. As of the Stellar MLS pull generated September 21, 2026, 42.9% of the 13,510 active listings across Orange, Seminole, Lake and Volusia counties have been on the market more than 60 days, and 54.3% are priced below their original asking price. That is genuine buyer leverage, but it is concentrated in the stale portion of inventory. Correctly priced, updated homes in desirable school zones still go under contract within days, frequently with competing offers, and buyers have little to no negotiating room on those.
How much are Central Florida sellers actually cutting prices?
Less than the headlines suggest. The median price reduction runs from 2.37% in Orange County to 2.63% in Lake County, which is roughly $9,500 to $10,500 on a $400,000 home. Sellers cut asking prices on 1,552 homes across the four counties in the seven days ending September 21, 2026. That is a widespread correction of list prices, not a collapse in home values.
Should I ask for a price reduction or for seller concessions?
At current rates, concessions usually move your monthly payment further than the same dollars taken off the price, because a seller credit can fund a rate buydown or cover closing costs directly. One Orange County buyer reported combining a $10,000 price reduction with about $19,000 in seller-paid closing costs on a $465,000 listing, roughly 6.24% of the original list price in total value. Which approach works depends on the seller's situation, so it is worth running both versions before you write the offer.
Do rising mortgage rates cancel out the price cuts?
They cancel out a large part of them. Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the average 30-year fixed rate at 6.95% the week of September 17, 2026, up from 6.76% the week before. On a $343,200 loan, which is Orange County's $429,000 median asking price with 20% down, that raises principal and interest by about $44 a month. Recovering that $44 through price alone would take roughly an $8,200 reduction, or about 80% of the county's median price cut. These figures cover principal and interest only and exclude taxes, insurance and HOA dues.
If you want to know which tier a specific home is in before you write an offer, that is a 10-minute conversation and I am happy to have it. I can pull the full listing history, the original list price, every reduction and the days on market for any address in Orange, Seminole, Lake or Volusia County. Call or text me, Brenden Rendo, at 407-616-9019, or see what past clients have said on the reviews page. The Homes In Orlando Team, 890 Northern Way, Suite D-1, Winter Springs, FL 32708.
