If you want to know if today’s housing market favors buyers or sellers, just take a look at how long homes hang around before they’re sold. In areas where there’s a lack of inventory and a large number of buyers, homes will sell faster and at a higher price. That’s a seller’s market. If there are more homes for sale than there are interested buyers, that’s a buyer’s market. Buyers, in these areas, can shop a little longer and may even be able to negotiate more favorable terms or a lower price once they find a house to buy. In other words, paying attention to how long homes stay up for sale will give you a better idea of whether you need to move fast or you have time to deliberate. To that end, a recent analysis from Trulia measured how many homes listed for sale on June 17 were still on the market on August 17. Nationally, 63 percent of the homes for sale in June hadn’t sold by August. That’s up from 61 percent last year and indicates conditions, overall, are headed in a direction that favors buyers. But despite the slight slowdown nationally, a closer look reveals big differences from one market to the next. For example, in some Californian markets, less than 40 percent of the homes for sale hadn’t sold after two months, while close to 60 percent of the homes for sale in Detroit and Kansas City were still available after the same amount of time. More here.