What Sellers Are Giving Up Right Now (and What's Actually Normal)

Here's a scenario that catches a lot of sellers off guard: you get an offer at your asking price, feel good about it for about five minutes, and then read the fine print — the buyer wants you to pay for a rate buydown, cover $10,000 in closing costs, and after the inspection they come back asking for a credit on top of that. It feels like getting nickel-and-dimed. It's also, right now, almost exactly what a normal transaction looks like. Nearly half of home sellers nationally gave some kind of concession this spring, the highest share since tracking of this started in 2019. This is a straight walk through the three concessions you're most likely to see — rate buydowns, closing cost credits, and repair credits — what's typical, what the real dollar numbers look like, and how to tell a normal market adjustment from an ask that's genuinely out of line.

Why this became normal, and why it isn't a red flag on its own

Nationally, Redfin found sellers gave concessions in 46.2% of home sales in the three months ending in May 2026, up from 43.1% the year before — the highest spring share on record. The reason is straightforward math: Redfin counted roughly 47% more sellers than buyers in the market nationally this spring. When buyers have more homes to choose from, they negotiate harder, and asking for help with the payment or the closing costs is one of the most common ways that plays out. In Austin specifically, with 6.0 months of inventory, this is squarely the environment we're in. A concession request isn't a signal that something's wrong with your house — it's usually just a buyer working the market the way the market currently allows.

Rate buydowns: what you're actually being asked to pay for

The 2-1 buydown is the most common version buyers are asking sellers to fund right now. It temporarily lowers the buyer's interest rate by 2 percentage points in year one and 1 point in year two, then the loan reverts to its actual note rate from year three on. You fund it by depositing money into an escrow account at closing, and the lender draws it down each month to cover the difference. On a $400,000 loan, a 2-1 buydown typically costs around $8,600 and saves the buyer roughly $450 a month in year one and $230 a month in year two. There are cheaper variations — a 1-0 buydown only discounts year one, at roughly half the cost — and a permanent buydown, where the money instead buys the rate down for the full life of the loan, which costs more upfront but delivers a smaller, permanent monthly savings instead of a temporary one.

Here's the part worth actually running the numbers on before you say no: a buydown request is frequently cheaper for you than the price reduction it's replacing. If a buyer says they'd walk without either a $10,000 price cut or a $8,600 buydown, the buydown often nets you more, because it's solving the buyer's monthly payment problem directly instead of lowering the number your home sold for — which also matters for how your sale compares to future comps in the neighborhood. Ask your lender or agent to run both scenarios side by side rather than reacting to the sticker shock of the request.

Closing cost credits: the caps, and what's normal in Austin right now

Every loan type has a ceiling on how much a seller can contribute toward a buyer's closing costs, and it's worth knowing these so you know when a request is within normal bounds versus pushing past what their lender would even allow. Conventional loans cap seller contributions at 3% of the purchase price when the buyer is putting down less than 10%, rising to 6% at 10–24% down, and up to 9% at 25% or more down. FHA loans allow up to 6%. VA loans cap true "concession" items — things like temporary buydowns or paying off a buyer's debt — at 4%, though ordinary closing costs and discount points are generally handled separately from that cap. USDA loans allow up to 6%. One rule protects you either way: concessions can't exceed the buyer's actual allowable closing costs, so a buyer can't use this as a backdoor way to pocket cash at your expense.

In practice, Austin closing cost credits are currently running $5,000 to $15,000, with buyers on homes around $500,000 regularly asking for $8,000 to $15,000. If a request lands inside that range, that's the market right now, not a sign you're being singled out. If it's pushing toward the legal maximum for their loan type, that's worth a closer look at the rest of the offer — price, timeline, contingencies — before deciding whether the full package still works for you.

Repair credits after the option period: what's reasonable to expect

After the buyer's inspector goes through the house, requests come back to you through a formal Amendment to Contract, not an informal ask — you can agree to it, counter it, or decline it. Buyers negotiating in good faith generally lead with safety and structural items: foundation movement, roof leaks, electrical hazards, active water intrusion, failing HVAC systems. Those are the items sellers should expect real pushback on. A long list dominated by cosmetic items — paint touch-ups, minor cabinet scuffs, normal wear on an older fixture — is a weaker negotiating position for the buyer, and it's reasonable to decline or heavily trim those.

Most experienced buyers' agents will actually ask for a credit rather than requiring you to complete the repair yourself, since it's simpler for everyone and avoids arguing over contractor quality afterward — that's usually a fine trade to accept. Before countering, get your own number: a quick quote from your own contractor on anything significant, like a roof or an HVAC system, will tell you fast whether the buyer's ask is in line with real repair costs or padded. And this is exactly where a clean Seller's Disclosure Notice pays off — if you already disclosed the issue up front, the buyer walked into the inspection knowing about it, which weakens their case for a large credit on something they'd already priced in when they made their offer.

When a request actually crosses the line

One concession isn't a red flag. What's worth pushing back on hard is a buyer stacking all three at once, at the top of every range, on top of a price that was already negotiated down — max-cap closing costs, a full 2-1 buydown, and an aggressive repair credit list heavy on cosmetic items. That combination usually means the buyer is testing how much they can get rather than solving a specific, legitimate problem with financing or the property. The fix isn't to get defensive about it — it's to run the full offer through a net sheet with your agent so you're evaluating the actual bottom line you'd walk away with, not reacting to each ask individually as it comes in.

Where this leaves you

Concessions in today's market are a negotiating tool, not a verdict on your house or your pricing. Know the real numbers — what a buydown actually costs versus what it's worth to the buyer, what the legal caps are on closing cost credits, what a fair repair credit looks like against an actual contractor quote — and you can tell the difference between a normal ask and a buyer testing your limits.