Buyer’s Market vs Seller’s Market

The sales to active listings ratio is widely used by industry insiders to quantify the strength of the market. It represents the percentage of the available inventory that is sold each month. Generally speaking, a ratio of below 0.12 indicates a slow market (“a buyer’s market”), while a ratio of over 0.20 indicates a hot market (“a seller’s market”), with many more buyers than sellers and intense competition for properties. A ratio between 0.12 and 0.20 reflects a “balanced” market, where the number of sellers and the number of buyers are roughly balanced.