REAL ESTATE

Bankrate’s Buyer Opportunity Index

Texas, florida offer best homebuying conditions

Home for sale in Fort Myers, Florida. Photo by Jeff Ostrowski

In South Texas, homebuyers are driving hard bargains these days. Craig Grove, broker-owner at GRT Realty, sells homes in McAllen and Brownsville. He says he recently helped a buyer negotiate a $16,500 price cut, $10,000 in closing costs and perks such as a home warranty.

“It’s the first time in years where I can show buyers multiple houses and we can take the time to choose the one that’s best for them,” Grove says. “It’s a good time for buyers.”

The story is similar in Southwest Florida, where for-sale homes are languishing and sellers are being forced to face reality. “There is a ton of inventory,” says Cissy Williams, broker at Buyer’s Choice Realty Group in Sanibel. “Sellers are saying, ‘We’ll paint the house. You want us to fix something up? That’s fine.’”

It’s a stark contrast from four years ago, when homes in Texas and Florida were selling so briskly that buyers had to compete fiercely with other bidders. Sellers certainly weren’t considering price cuts or other concessions. As the U.S. housing market evolves, conditions have shifted dramatically in formerly hot Sun Belt markets. In once-booming metro areas in Texas and Florida, buyers now have the upper hand.

According to Bankrate’s new Buyer Opportunity Index, homebuyers have the most bargaining power in the McAllen, Texas, metro area. That’s followed by the Cape Coral-Fort Myers metro area in southwestern Florida.

Sellers still have plenty of power in parts of the Rust Belt and Northeast. Rochester, New York, is the worst market for buyers, followed by Hartford, Connecticut.

Bankrate’s Buyer Opportunity Index compares market conditions in February 2026 to those in February 2022, when the pandemic housing boom peaked.

Our index analyzed the 100 largest U.S. metro areas and examined four key metrics: housing inventory based on months of supply, share of homes with price cuts, median days to a pending sale and the sale-price-to-list-price ratio.

The 10 best markets for buyers:

1. McAllen, Texas
2. Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida
3. San Antonio, Texas
4. Austin, Texas
5. North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Florida
6. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Florida
7. Deltona, Florida
8. Tampa, Florida
9. Palm Bay, Florida
10. Houston, Texas

The 10 best markets for buyers — and, conversely, the 10 worst places for sellers — have many themes in common. All are in Texas and Florida, two states that have experienced significant job growth and population growth in recent years. Strong local economies drew new residents and spurred builders to start new homes. Now, price appreciation and sales volumes have slowed — in part because home prices rose beyond the bounds of affordability, in part because home sellers are competing with new homes hitting the market.

The 10 best markets for sellers:

1. Rochester, New York
2. Hartford, Connecticut
3. Bridgeport, Connecticut
4. Syracuse, New York
5. Buffalo, New York
6. San Jose, California
7. Allentown, Pennsylvania
8. Boston, Massachusetts
9. New Haven, Connecticut
10. San Francisco, California

At the other end of the spectrum, the 10 best markets for sellers — and the 10 toughest places for buyers — are mostly in the Northeast. With less job growth and lower population growth in recent years, these markets have experienced little new homebuilding. An exception is Northern California — while the Bay Area’s tech-driven economy remains strong, there’s little to no land available for construction of new housing. That’s crimping supply and keeping Silicon Valley in seller’s market territory.

In McAllen, a pause

The McAllen metro area encompasses Hidalgo County, population 921,549. The region sits along the Mexican border just inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

The housing market there has slowed considerably. In February, the typical home for sale needed 86 days to go under contract, according to Zillow. That was the longest marketing time in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas.

Meanwhile, the supply of inventory had ballooned to more than 14 months. For context, a six-month supply is considered a balanced market, meaning that neither sellers nor buyers have the upper hand.

McAllen remains an affordable market. The median price of existing homes sold in 2025 was $245,000, according to the Texas Association of Realtors. That’s well below the national and state averages.

However, the glut of homes for sale suggests that many homeowners have yet to accept the market’s new reality. “Sellers still think it’s a seller’s market,” Grove says. “They’re like, ‘I’m going to get 20 offers.’ Dude, that was three years ago.”

At the same time, Grove says, potential buyers have been turned off by the recent runup in mortgage rates, along with fast-rising bills for property taxes and homeowners insurance.

Another factor: McAllen’s growth in recent years spurred a spate of homebuilding. There were 7,271 residential building permits issued in Hidalgo County in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

While homes are selling slowly in McAllen now, Grove predicts the pause will prove temporary. “The economic growth here is staggering,” he says. “It’s not going to be a buyer’s market for long.”

In Cape Coral, a building boom — and helpful notes in open houses

The Cape Coral-Fort Myers market along the Gulf Coast encompasses Lee County, population 875,607.

In February, the typical home for sale was on the market for 67 days before going under contract, Zillow reports. The supply of inventory stood at 9.6 months. Today’s soft market falollows a pandemic boom.

“It’s a necessary correction,” says Mike Hollow, broker-owner at Blue Line Realty SWFL in Fort Myers and president-elect of the local Realtor association. “We don’t like seeing double-digit appreciation. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Prices have begun to retreat a bit. The median price of existing homes sold in February 2026 was $405,000, down 2.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Florida Realtors.

The Cape Coral-Fort Myers market has experienced strong migration — the region’s population jumped by 13 percent from 2020 to 2025, according to Census data. That spurred a building boom — DR Horton and other builders are marketing houses in new subdivisions, while a number of new apartment complexes have gone up along Interstate 75. Builders pulled permits for 13,547 housing units last year, according to Census data. That represented the second-fastest pace of construction among the top 100 metro areas.

As in South Texas, sellers in Southwest Florida think boom conditions still exist today. “That frenzy is directly related to the stubbornness of some sellers today,” Williams says.

But sellers and listing agents are realizing they have to work to sell properties. Nearly a quarter of properties on the market in February had undergone price cuts. At an open house for one condo in Fort Myers, the listing agent had posted descriptions throughout the unit. “New ceiling fan with light,” read one. “Extra large walk-in shower with seat and new handheld shower head,” said another.

In Rochester, a boom rages on

Rochester, meanwhile, hardly seems to exist in the same nation as the Sun Belt. Houses go under contract in just 11 days, and the inventory is a microscopic 1.4 months.

The Rochester market illustrates the story of the post-pandemic housing market. A tepid local economy has led to a shrinking population. The metro area’s population count shrank 0.9 percent from 2020 to 2025, according to Census data. And that means there’s little new construction to compete with existing homes. There were building permits issued for just 1,749 housing units last year, one of the slowest paces of construction in the 100 largest markets.

Methodology

Bankrate’s Buyer Opportunity Index tracks how much power has shifted from sellers to buyers since the peak of the pandemic housing boom in the 100 largest U.S. metros. We compared February 2026 housing data against February 2022, a time when sellers had significant leverage in the U.S. housing market.

By using 2022 as a fixed baseline, the index identifies which U.S. metros have seen the most significant erosion of seller leverage. We track four core Zillow metrics to measure this shift: housing inventory based on months of supply, share of homes with price cuts, median days to a pending sale and the sale-price-to-list-price ratio.

To ensure a fair comparison across different metrics, each metric’s change was converted into a Z-Score. These scores were then averaged and mapped onto a scale of 1 to 100. A score of 100 signals the toughest market for sellers, where buyers have the most power, while 1 marks the cities where sellers still hold the most leverage.

Jeff Ostrowski writes about mortgages and housing for Bankrate. He’s the author of How to Buy a Home in a Miserable Market.