More Homes for Sale. Fewer Buyers. What Does That Actually Mean for Northern Virginia Homeowners?

If you've been following the housing market lately, you've probably noticed a change in the headlines.

Inventory is rising. Home sales are slowing. Prices are beginning to soften.

Depending on what you read, you might think the housing market is headed for trouble.

But many of these headlines tell you what's happening without giving you enough context to understand what it means. And context matters when you're deciding whether to sell your home.

A 200% Increase Isn't Always a Big Deal

Let's say there was one home for sale in your neighborhood last year. Today, there are three.

That's a 200% increase in inventory. There are still only three homes for sale.

If there are ten qualified buyers looking for a home like yours, three listings might represent a very competitive market. If there's only one buyer, it's a different story.

The percentage increase is accurate in both cases. What it tells us about the market is entirely different.

This is why I spend less time worrying about percentage changes and more time looking at the actual number of homes competing for buyers and how quickly those homes are selling.

Buyers Are Pulling Back

According to Redfin's November 5 housing market report, pending home sales nationally declined 16.4% compared with the same period last year.

That's roughly 54,000 fewer pending transactions over the four-week reporting period.

Meanwhile, the number of homes actively listed for sale increased just 2.1%, and new listings declined 4.6% during the same period.

In other words, fewer homeowners are putting their properties on the market, but buyer activity has fallen even faster.

What About Home Prices?

The same Redfin report found that the national median home sale price declined 0.4% from a year earlier. On a $390,000 home, that's approximately $1,560.

The median sale price also doesn't tell us whether an individual home's value has increased or decreased.

If more expensive homes sell one month and fewer sell the next, the median price can decline even if the value of every individual property remains unchanged.

To understand whether home values are actually changing, we need to compare similar properties in similar locations.

A four-bedroom detached home in Alexandria doesn't compete with a condominium in Reston simply because they're both in Northern Virginia. Real estate is local, and it's competitive.

The Number I Pay the Most Attention To

When I'm advising someone about selling their home, one of the first things I want to understand is how many homes are competing for the same buyers. I also want to know how many of those homes are going under contract.

Consider two neighborhoods.

Neighborhood A: There are five homes for sale, and three went under contract this week.

Neighborhood B: There are twenty homes for sale, and two went under contract this week.

Both neighborhoods are producing sales, but they're very different markets.

In Neighborhood A, buyers are absorbing available inventory relatively quickly. In Neighborhood B, homes are accumulating faster than buyers are committing to purchase them.

Those differences matter when deciding how to price a home, when to bring it to market, and how much negotiating room a seller may have.

One week's activity isn't enough to draw a conclusion. I want to see how those numbers behave over several weeks and how they compare with the same period in previous years.

Days on Market Still Matters

Another number I pay close attention to is how long homes remain on the market before going under contract.

A home that sells in five days is telling us something different from one that takes sixty days.

If every comparable property is taking forty-five days to sell, a home that's been listed for thirty days may be performing perfectly well.

If competing homes are consistently selling in a week, thirty days without an acceptable offer deserves a closer look.

Price reductions tell us something, too. When sellers lower asking prices, they're responding to information the market is giving them. We also need to pay attention to homes that are withdrawn from the market without selling.

Those unsuccessful listings are part of the market story, even though they never appear in the closed-sales statistics.

So, Is Now a Good Time to Sell?

That's the question most homeowners really want answered, and the answer isn't going to come from a national headline about inventory rising 2% or prices falling 0.4%.

It depends on your home, your competition, the number of buyers looking for a property like yours, and what you're trying to accomplish.

Selling a home works the same way as selling any other asset, such as a stock. An investor sells when the money has a job to do, like funding retirement or buying something else. Whether the timing is right depends on that job, not on whether the market went up or down last month.

Your home is no different. If you're downsizing in the same area, the home you sell and the home you buy are priced in the same market, so a softer market affects both sides of the trade. If you're leaving the area or turning the proceeds into retirement income, the timing depends on what that money has to accomplish and when.

Define the goal first. The market numbers only mean something measured against it.

A homeowner with very little direct competition may be in an excellent position to sell, even when the broader market is slowing. Another homeowner, just a few miles away, may face an entirely different situation.

After more than thirty years selling homes in Northern Virginia, I've learned that the market doesn't reward or punish every property equally. It responds to the choices buyers have, and understanding those choices is far more useful than trying to predict where the entire housing market is headed.

Before You Decide, Understand Your Market

If you're thinking about selling, start with four questions:

1. What am I trying to accomplish by selling?
2. How many homes are currently competing with mine?
3. How many comparable homes are actually going under contract?
4. How long is it taking those homes to attract a buyer?

Those answers won't tell you everything, but they'll tell you considerably more than the latest national housing headline.

If you'd like to work through them for your home, start a conversation.

David Zadareky is a Northern Virginia residential real estate broker with more than 30 years of experience helping homeowners make informed decisions about buying and selling.

Source: Redfin National Housing Market Update, November 5, 2026. National figures cover the four weeks ending November 1, 2026. Local examples are illustrative, not actual neighborhood market statistics.