Homesage.ai says Traverse City sellers are most open to price cuts

Homesage.ai’s Q3 2026 Investor Report ranks U.S. markets by seller willingness to negotiate, with Traverse City, Michigan, leading the list. The findings point to where investors may find more pricing flexibility as one in three U.S. listings has already reduced asking price.

Why it matters: - Investors can use seller motivation signals to aim for lower entry prices, leaving more room for repairs on fix-and-flip deals and helping rental income cover monthly costs. - Sellers with distressed homes may also benefit because buyers willing to purchase as-is can shorten the time to close.

What happened: - Homesage.ai released its Q3 2026 Investor Report on October 13, 2026. - The report analyzes 701,539 homes for sale as of October 6, 2026. - Traverse City, Michigan, ranked first among U.S. cities where sellers appear most willing to lower asking prices. - Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, ranked second, and Kingsport-Bristol on the Tennessee-Virginia border ranked third.

The details: - Homesage.ai assigns each home a Seller Motivation Score from 0 to 100, with scores of 50 or higher counted as high. - In Traverse City, 12.4% of homes for sale scored high, nearly double the U.S. average of 6.8%. - Coeur d'Alene posted a 12.0% high-score rate, and Kingsport-Bristol posted 11.3%. - Sellers were least flexible in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Yuma, Arizona, at 2.0% each, and in the Omaha area of Nebraska and Iowa at 2.9%. - One-third of U.S. homes for sale, or 33%, have already dropped price. - The average price cut across the U.S. is 5.9%. - Price drops were more common in the top three cities, where 37% to 44% of homes had reduced prices. - In those three markets, homes sold between July and September dropped price by 7.0% on average before selling, up from 5.5% for homes sold between April and June. - In Kingsport-Bristol, a typical home sold between July and September went for 1.8% below asking price. - The score weighs factors including time on market, price changes, nearby sales and seasonality. - Time on market has the biggest influence: 28.6% of homes listed for more than 60 days scored high, compared with 1.3% of homes listed for 60 days or less. - The score applies only to homes for sale, and 95.8% of them have one. - Homesage.ai includes the score in its Full Property Reports and Investment Property Search, and developers can access it through the Homesage.ai Real Estate APIs. - The city rankings cover 223 U.S. areas with at least 500 homes for sale. - Lafayette, Louisiana, is excluded because price drops are rarely recorded there. - Most homes in the dataset were listed after June 26, 2026, which makes longer-listed homes a smaller share of the sample. - Sold-home figures cover only part of the homes sold from May to September 2026. - Idaho does not share sale prices, so Coeur d'Alene has no sold-price figure. - Homesage.ai is based in Washington, DC, and says it uses AI to analyze 155 million U.S. properties. - Homesage.ai offers Investment Property Search, Full Property Reports, Real Estate APIs, Custom AI Solutions, the DealFinder Mobile App and the DealFinder Browser Extension. - More information is available in the company's announcement.

Between the lines: - The report suggests negotiation opportunities are strongest where homes sit longer and sellers have already started cutting prices. - The top-ranked markets are not necessarily the largest, but they appear to have more pricing pressure than the typical U.S. listing. - Homesage.ai is positioning seller motivation data as an investor screening tool, not just a pricing metric.

What's next: - Investors can use the report to target markets with more apparent room to negotiate before making offers. - Homesage.ai is expected to keep packaging the score across its products and APIs for investors, agents, lenders and developers. - The company invites users to explore its investment-property tools through the company's announcement.

The bottom line: - The report points to a simple pattern: the longer a listing sits, the more likely sellers are to cut price, and Traverse City leads the current U.S. list.