A general theme of the 2025 U.S. housing market was the preponderance of sellers who chose to pull their home from the market rather than settle for a subpar offer or play the waiting game.

A Realtor.com report released in early December revealed that home sellers began atypically pulling properties from the market during the summer months at an alarming pace, with about 6% of active listings vanishing each month starting in June, “a level not typically seen outside of December or January.”

Subsequent data from Redfin, a competing real estate listings platform, showed that home delistings hit a record high of 112,788 in December.

But the tides appear to be turning in the new year, with many frustrated sellers deciding to dip their toes back in the frigid January housing pool.

Almost 45,000 homes that were delisted last year had for-sale signs pitched on the front lawn again in January, new data from Redfin indicates. That’s the highest-ever January relistings total, at least according to the company’s records dating back to 2016.

“Homebuyers are already scoring discounts because there are more homes for sale than people who want to buy them, and it’s possible those discounts will get bigger if relistings boost supply further,” Redfin Senior Economist Asad Khan noted in the report published Thursday.

Khan added that some sellers will likely be more willing to negotiate, “since they’ve already been burned once,” meaning homebuyers “shouldn’t be shy about asking for concessions.”

The Redfin report outlines how relistings have spiked in expensive West Coast markets but are less common in more affordable areas in the Midwest.

San Jose, Calif., led the top 50 U.S. metros with 12.5% of all new listings in January being homes that had been delisted last year. San Francisco was second with an 11.4% rate, followed by Oakland at 10.2% and Seattle at 8.3%

At the bottom of the list, the blue-collar Midwest cities of Pittsburgh and Milwaukee had respective relisting rates of just 1.7% and 2.2% in January.

But a Milwaukee-based Redfin Premier real estate agent quoted in the report said local housing dynamics in the Cream City are more nuanced than that figure suggests.

“Milwaukee is a lowercase S seller’s market, not an uppercase S seller’s market,” W.J. Eulberg said. “There are neighborhoods where homes will sell for 6% to 8% over the list price and neighborhoods where they won’t.”

He added that delisters turned relisters should be prepared to accept an offer lower than their initial price tag.

“Buyers are savvy,” he said. “They know how long your home has been on the market, how many times it has been delisted and relisted, and your original asking price.”