As summer shifted to fall this year, people selling their homes along the Wasatch Front became more likely to cut the price, according to recent data.

Five counties – Davis, Salt Lake, Tooele, Utah and Weber – had some of the largest moves nationally in sellers dropping their asking prices, according to data from Texas-based real estate portal Movoto.

Sellers are using price to differentiate because buyers are “being a little more selective,” said Aaron Drussel, president of the Utah Association of Realtors.

People selling existing homes are up against new construction and builders offering a lot of concessions, he said, as well as high interest rates and overall economic uncertainty.

“I still think sellers think we’re in a white-hot seller market, and we’re not,” said Mike Hancock, a licensed Realtor and associate broker with Century 21 Everest Realty and a Movoto agent.

Five counties in the top 10

In mid-July, very few people trying to sell their Wasatch Front home had cut prices. Between 9% and 12% of active listings were priced below the original asking point on July 14.

By Sept. 1, that figure had jumped in every county, ranging from 18.2% in Tooele County to 24.6% in Davis County.

And of 388 counties analyzed nationwide, all five along Utah’s Wasatch Front were among the top 10 for the biggest shifts in the share of homes listed below their original asking price – something Drussel and Hancock said is a sign that sellers are increasingly adjusting to a more buyer-friendly market.

Davis and Salt Lake counties were first and second nationally, with a 14.4- and 12.4-percentage-point jump in the number of listings offering a price drop, respectively.

Weber County also had a double-digit percentage-point jump, from 11.9% of homes listed below their original asking price in July to 22.5% in September. That tied it for third with Eagle County, Colorado – where Vail is located.

Utah and Tooele counties saw smaller jumps and ranked seventh and eighth, respectively.

Washington County was one of 101 counties where a smaller portion of listings had price drops, but the decrease was less than one percentage point.

The analysis doesn’t include all of the country’s more than 3,000 counties, because Movoto narrowed the selection criteria to include counties with at least 500 active listings of which at least 3% had a price cut and where there wasn’t a large increase in the number of listings.

The analysis, however, matches what Utah real estate agents said they’re seeing on the ground.

People cutting prices ‘living more in reality’

Drussel, with the Utah Association of Realtors, said this year’s housing market has been an “interesting one.”

The market typically picks up late in winter and into spring, he said, and that started around February then stalled amid the Iran war and overall economic uncertainty. Higher interest rates also played a part, Hancock said, by making buyers hesitate and sellers question whether they want to give up their lower rates.

That pause “held off a lot of stuff this spring” and the typical spike in May and June, Drussel said, leaving homes that typically would have sold still on the market in July and August.

“Then, when people aren’t seeing the typical results, they’re going to start to figure out what they can do to move their home,” he said.

Some sellers had unrealistic expectations to begin with, Hancock said. He said he has kept having clients who want to list their home at $20,000 more than the selling point of similar houses nearby.

Drussel said a lot of sellers feel like they’ve earned the equity and don’t want to take a loss “even though they never really got that money.”

They’re also pricing their homes based on what they think they need, Hancock said – but buyers don’t care.

“People dropping the prices are the people living more in reality,” he said.

That’s especially true because builders are offering “significant concessions” for new houses, Drussel said.

Utahns trying to sell their own home need to “play ball the same way,” Hancock said.

He said he doesn’t see the market changing soon, and sellers need to start being more creative. They can cut the price, he said, or mimic new construction by offering concessions like money toward closing costs.