When Marcus and Tia Reynolds found a four-bedroom listing in suburban Charlotte priced at $385,000, their agent suggested something that would have been laughed off three years ago: ask the seller to pay $23,100 toward closing costs, the full 6 percent allowed under conventional-loan rules. The seller agreed within 48 hours.
“We were bracing for a fight,” Marcus said. “There was no fight.”
That kind of outcome has become common in the spring of 2026. A sustained rise in housing inventory has given buyers negotiating power they haven’t held since before the pandemic, and one of the clearest markers is how often sellers are agreeing to cover closing costs. The National Association of Realtors’ Realtors Confidence Index shows seller concessions, including closing-cost credits, rate buydowns, and repair allowances, appearing in a growing share of transactions nationwide. Agent surveys published by NAR, combined with brokerage-level analytics from Redfin, indicate that roughly four to five out of every ten conventional-loan purchase contracts written so far in 2026 include some form of seller-paid closing-cost credit. During the bidding-war frenzy of 2021 and 2022, that share was negligible.
Why sellers are saying yes
Inventory tells most of the story. Data tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development show that months’ supply of homes for sale has pushed well above the range economists consider balanced, tipping conditions firmly into buyer’s-market territory across many metros. Meanwhile, new residential building permits tracked by the Census Bureau continue feeding units into the pipeline, which means the current surplus is unlikely to shrink quickly even if mortgage rates ease later this year…