There are three ways listings come off the market. They either sell, they are withdrawn, or they expire.
A sold listing is exactly as it sounds. Buyer makes an offer, seller accepts, contract proceeds to closing.
A withdrawn listing is one that is temporarily taken off the market. Sometimes this is so the seller can make repairs or it could be the seller is leaving town for a few weeks and doesn't want the home show while out of the area.
While active inventory counts are up 25% from a year ago, the number of withdrawn and expired listings are up almost 90% versus 2024. This is indicative of a market where buyer expectations and seller expectations are not aligned, meaning a lot of sellers are throwing in the towel rather than adjusting to the realities of the current market.
Take a look at the withdrawn/expired listing counts from just the past six months:
March 2024 - 899 withdrawn/expired
March 2025 - 1,266 withdrawn/expired
April 2024 - 930 withdrawn/expired
April 2025 - 1,392 withdrawn/expired
May 2024 - 1,014 withdrawn/expired
May 2025 - 1,720 withdrawn/expired
June 2024 - 1,145 withdrawn/expired
June 2025 - 2,379 withdrawn/expired
July 2024 - 1,352 withdrawn/expired
July 2025 - 2,796 withdrawn/expired
August 2024 - 1,522 withdrawn/expired
August 2025 - 3,424 withdrawn/expired
What you can clearly see here is the pace of withdrawn and expired listings compared to last year has accelerated significantly over the past few months.
Call it the "Sellers Summer of Discontent".
Homes are still selling in our market, but it takes a legitimate value proposition to entice a buyer today. Price, condition and location matter more today at any time in the past 15 years.
This has been a year of difficult conversations, because many sellers either don't want to hear to don't believe hat we're living through a totally different market than the one they have known for the past 10+ years.
For each two listings that sell right now, a third is being pulled from the market. More than 25% of all listing properties are dying on the vine without selling, which is a real problem.
A sizeable percentage of agents simply don't know how to operate in this market, as many have never experienced anything other than multiple offers and bidding wars. The market of 2025 is a different animal, and we're on track to see more than 20,000 homes either withdrawn or expired by the end of the year.
That means expectations are out of alignment with reality. A large number of agents on focused on securing listings, but securing a listing doesn't mean you're going to be able to sell it.
This also means a lot of these failed listings are going to come back into the fold in early 2026, which indicates we're going to have highly elevated inventory counts early next year compared to previous years.
There is no silver bullet that will magically sell your home like it's 2021. It boils down to price, condition and location. Plus a dose of reality about how to position it in a market where buyers are skittish, the economy is uncertain and many agents don't have the courage, skillset or will to engage in difficult conversations up front.
