No one’s calling this a buyer’s market yet — but agents are saying that conditions for Bay Area homebuyers may be as good as they’re going to get this year.

Inventory is up. Prices are staying steady. And notably, the number of listings with price drops is also on the rise from last year.

“Homebuyers have never had more selection in the last five years than they have right now,” said Rick Fuller, a real estate agent based in Concord.

As of April, the number of active listings in the nine-county Bay Area was at a five-year high, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“There’s more for buyers to choose from,” said Tracey Esling, president of the Bay East Association of Realtors. “Sellers have to be more competitive with each other,”

The result? Prices are staying stable, for now. The median sales price of a single-family home in the region was $1.42 million as of April, down 1.7% from this time last year, according to the California Association of Realtors. The median sales price was $2.3 million in San Mateo County, $2.1 million in Santa Clara County, $1.78 million in San Francisco, $1.7 million in Marin County, $1.3 million in Alameda County, and $900,000 in Contra Costa County.

Across all Bay Area counties, the number of listings with price drops had also ticked up from last year.

Still, just because listings are dropping their prices, that doesn’t mean that buyers are necessarily going to see a dip in the final sales price. The majority of homes in the Bay Area tend to sell for above asking price — so dropping a listing price can just be a way for buyers to attract more interest or incite a bidding war, Fuller said.

“Sellers generally set their prices hoping to achieve a higher sales price than their neighbors did,” he noted. “Now sellers are seeing that they can’t just keep pushing the limits of prices.”

A more balanced market between sellers and buyers is rare here in the Bay Area, where the demand for homes tends to far outstrip the number of available houses.

“We’re seeing more listings than buyers, and that’s the first time we’ve seen that in at least 10 years,” said Paddy Kehoe, an agent based in Lafayette.

Sellers, he said, are deciding that after several years of elevated interest rates, they can’t hold off any longer, even if the higher rates can translate to hundreds — or even thousands — added to a monthly mortgage payment. Rates on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage average 6.9%, as of May 22, according to the housing finance giant Freddie Mac.

“Life moves on,” Kehoe said. “Even if interest rates are around 6%, people are feeling like, ‘It is what it is.’”

But buyers may not feel the same way.

The spring homebuying season, typically one of the busiest times in the Bay Area, saw many buyers pause their searches in April amid economic uncertainty — much of it tied to President Donald Trump’s renewed tariff threats, which sent stock markets lurching and buyers to the sidelines. Many buyers — especially those in tech — cash out their stock portfolios to put toward a down payment on a home.

April saw some of the largest dips in the stock market since the start of the pandemic, followed by big rallies as Trump reduced tariffs for some countries. At this point, the market has largely recovered, and people are cautiously returning to the market, said Finola Fellner, an agent in Lafayette.

“When the tariffs started in early April, the market came to a screeching halt,” she said.

April’s home sales reflected the turbulence. After leading the country in year-over-year home sales growth in March, Bay Area sales flatlined in April. In Alameda and Contra Costa counties, sales dipped from last year by 2.8% and 12.9%, respectively.

Sales fell the most in areas located farther from main commuting corridors like Interstate 880, whereas they rose in cities like Oakland, Berkeley and Walnut Creek, according to the Bay East Association of Realtors. Realtors say that as more workers are being asked to return to the office, homebuyers are prioritizing locations with shorter commutes into job centers like San Jose and San Francisco, rather than homes on the edge of the Bay Area, even if they are cheaper.

Mortgage rates may have also played a role in the April slowdown. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hovered around 6.6% for much of March, then ticked up to 6.8% by mid-April.

“Any time the interest rates get close to 7%, we see a slowdown in the market,” Fuller, the Concord agent, said. “But we know there’s a significant amount of demand out there, because every time we see the interest rates drop, there’s a tsunami of buyers on the market.”

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With more homes coming onto the market, too, they’re taking somewhat longer to sell. The median time on the market this April was 14 days, compared to 12 last year.

“With more options to choose from, buyers are taking their time,” said San Jose agent Fifi Li.

Fellner, in Lafayette, said she’s seeing much of the same. In the leafy subdivisions she specializes in, buyers are especially concerned about making sure they can get insurance on their new home — the price tags on some policies can be discouraging.

“Buyers aren’t moving as quickly as they once were,” she said. “They’re now being more thorough than ever. They’re not desperate.”