Take a $700,000 Reston townhouse and a buyer putting ten percent down. You have agreed to give up $15,000 to save the deal. You can hand it over three ways, and they are not close to equivalent.
Cut the price to $685,000 and your buyer’s payment drops $87 a month. They also bring $1,500 less to closing, because their down payment shrinks with the price.
Write a $15,000 closing cost credit instead and the payment does not move at all. But your buyer brings $15,000 less to the table.
Put the same $15,000 into a permanent rate buydown and the payment falls somewhere between $186 and $247 a month, depending on how points price that day, with no help on cash.
You net roughly $685,000 in all three cases. Your buyer receives something very different each time.
That is the whole decision, and it turns on one question: what is actually stopping this buyer, cash or payment?
The three options, side by side
Assumptions: $700,000 purchase, ten percent down, 30-year fixed at 6.67 percent, the Freddie Mac average for the week ending August 13, 2026. Principal and interest only, excluding taxes, insurance, and association dues.
| What you give up | Buyer’s monthly payment | Buyer’s cash at closing |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing (list price $700,000) | $4,053 | Full |
| $15,000 price cut | $3,966, saving $87 | $1,500 less |
| $15,000 closing cost credit | $4,053, no change | $15,000 less |
| $15,000 as permanent points | $3,806 to $3,867, saving $186 to $247 | No change |
Read the right-hand column first. For a buyer whose obstacle is cash, the credit delivers ten times what the price cut delivers, at identical cost to you. For a buyer whose obstacle is the monthly number, the buydown does two to three times the work of the price cut.
The price reduction is the weakest of the three on both measures. It is also the only one that changes the public record of your listing.
One caution on the buydown figure, because it is the softest number here. The $15,000 works out to roughly 2.4 points on a $630,000 loan. Point pricing is not linear: the first point typically buys more rate than the fourth, and some lenders cap how deep a single buydown can go. The range above spans a 0.45 to 0.60 percent rate reduction, which brackets what 2.4 points realistically delivers. Get a written quote from your lender before you build a negotiation around it.
Which conversation you are likely to have depends on what you own
Reston is not one market right now, and the concession question lands very differently across its segments.
In July 2026, Bright MLS data put Reston detached homes at a median of $1,106,625, nine days on market, and 102.3 percent of original list price. Sellers in that segment collected more than they asked. Fourteen detached homes above $1 million sold during the month against 14 sitting at month end, which is one month of supply.
Condos ran a different race. Median of $391,000, 26 days on market, and 98.3 percent of original list, below the five-year July average of 99.1 percent. Reston finished the month with 108 active condos against a five-year July average of 59, and 3.09 months of supply across the segment.
Townhouses landed between the two at a $709,000 median and 13 days, but with 56 active listings, up 60 percent from the 35 available a year earlier.
That 98.3 percent figure is the concession story in one number. Detached sellers in Reston are largely not having this conversation. Condo and townhouse sellers are.
Herndon sits closer to the middle. Across the 20170 zip code, the median sale price reached roughly $720,000 over the most recent three-month window, up 0.3 percent year over year, with a median of 32 days on market. That runs seven days slower than the same period last year. Homes still closed at 100.7 percent of list, and 47.6 percent sold above asking.
Those two Herndon numbers pull in opposite directions, and both are useful. Closing above list with nearly half of homes going over asking describes a market where sellers hold position. A 32-day median with a week added year over year describes one where buyers have time to think. Read together they suggest Herndon sellers should expect to be asked, and should expect to win most of the negotiation if the house is priced right and shows well.
The regional pattern holds. NVAR reported 3,025 active listings across Northern Virginia in July, up 19.6 percent year over year, with condo inventory up 41.1 percent and attached homes up 33 percent while detached inventory fell 2.5 percent. Regional months of supply reached 2.13, up 14.8 percent.
Nationally, roughly two in five sellers gave concessions to buyers as of early 2025 according to Redfin tracking, near the 2023 peak of 45 percent and well above the 22.5 percent low of 2022. Northern Virginia runs tighter than that national figure, but the direction is the same.
Why the credit usually beats the price cut
Three reasons, in order of how much they matter.
The buyer’s constraint is usually cash, not payment. In Northern Virginia, a buyer purchasing between $600,000 and $750,000 typically faces $10,000 to $18,000 in closing costs. Fairfax County property tax escrow alone can run $4,000 to $7,000 at settlement, depending on assessed value and timing. Add a year of homeowners insurance and per-diem interest and a buyer who budgeted carefully can still arrive short by $5,000 to $8,000 more than expected. A credit lands directly on that gap. A price cut trickles $1,500 toward it.
A price cut changes the number buyers see. Every buyer watching the listing sees the reduction, and so does anyone who pulls the price history later. A credit does not change the list price on the public listing. It is not invisible, since Bright MLS records concessions in its own field and any agent or appraiser pulling comps can see it, but it does not rewrite the price history a buyer scrolls through.
Comparable sales carry the price cut forward. Your sold price becomes a comp for your neighbors and for the next appraisal in your community. A $685,000 sale and a $700,000 sale with a $15,000 credit put different numbers into that record.
When the price cut is the right call anyway
A concession cannot manufacture interest. If your listing is drawing few showings and no offers, the problem sits upstream of the negotiation, and the only tool that reaches it is price.
The test is simple. Are you getting showings that produce no offers, or are you not getting showings? Offers stalling at the financing stage point to a concession. Empty showing calendars point to a price correction.
There is also a ceiling, actually two. Most loan programs cap seller concessions at three to six percent of the purchase price depending on loan type and down payment, and a credit cannot exceed the buyer’s actual closing costs and prepaid items. Anything above that has to be restructured or dropped. The $15,000 above works out to 2.1 percent of $700,000, comfortably inside the caps that apply to a primary residence purchase. A $60,000 concession on the same house would clear neither test.
The four concessions, and what each one repairs
Concessions is one word covering four different tools.
Closing cost credit. A dollar amount the seller contributes toward the buyer’s closing costs, appearing as a seller credit on the settlement statement. This works when a buyer is fully qualified on income and credit but stretched at the closing table. It fits the Reston attached and condo segments, where July medians ran $391,000 for condos and $709,000 for townhouses, and where buyers clear underwriting but arrive thin on reserves.
Repair credit. A dollar amount in place of completing repairs before settlement. Older attached construction in communities like Hunters Woods, Shadowood, and Lakewinds turns up inspection items as a matter of course. Aging HVAC, roofs at the end of their service life, water intrusion in older townhouses. A credit preserves the timeline and hands the buyer control over the contractor. Repairs rushed before closing tend to raise more questions than they settle. The hard part is the number, since neither side usually holds a firm estimate. Framing it as a range and splitting the difference moves faster than arguing toward a figure that is uncertain either way.
Rate buydown. Seller funds that reduce the buyer’s rate, permanently through discount points or temporarily through a structure like a 2-1, where the rate sits two percent below the note rate in year one and one percent below in year two. The permanent version suits a buyer planning to stay. The temporary version suits a buyer expecting to refinance or expecting income growth. On the $630,000 loan in the example above, a 2-1 buydown costs roughly $14,500, funded by the seller into an escrowed subsidy account that releases monthly rather than paid as discount points. If the buyer refinances or sells early, the unused balance is typically credited back toward their loan.
Prepaid item help. Targeted at the escrow funding line items rather than lender fees or title costs: the first year of homeowners insurance, the property tax escrow deposit, and per-diem interest from settlement to month end. This one works on the margins, for a buyer who has cleared underwriting and hit an unexpected shortfall in the escrow setup. It does not rescue a buyer who is undercapitalized.
None of the four fixes a house that needs $80,000 of deferred work or one priced above where the market is valuing it.
The same request means different things at different moments
A concession request arrives at one of three points in a deal, and the stage tells you which tool fits.
With the offer. The buyer is asking before anyone has inspected anything, which means the request is about their cash position rather than the house. A closing cost credit answers it directly. This is also the moment when you have the most leverage to trade, because you can hold the price in exchange for the credit, or shorten a contingency period, or firm up a settlement date that suits you.
After the inspection. Now the request is about the property, and the number should track actual findings. A repair credit fits here. So does declining, if the items are cosmetic or the buyer is relitigating a price they already agreed to. Sellers who conceded a large closing cost credit with the offer sometimes find they have spent the room they needed at this stage, which argues for holding something back early.
After the appraisal. This one behaves differently from the other two. If the appraisal lands below the contract price, a credit cannot close the gap on its own, because the lender sizes the loan off the lower of the contract price and the appraised value. A credit can still free up the buyer’s cash to cover the difference out of pocket, but it cannot exceed their actual closing costs and prepaid items, so on a large gap it runs out of room quickly. Your options narrow to reducing the price to the appraised figure, asking the buyer to cover the difference in cash, splitting it, or challenging the appraisal with better comparable sales.
A low appraisal is the one scenario where a price reduction is not the weak tool. It is frequently the only tool. This is also the moment when your neighbors’ recent sales, including whether those sales carried undisclosed concessions, start to matter to you personally.
Decide the framework before you list, not after the offer arrives
Three questions, worth working through before the listing goes active.
Who is the likely buyer for this home? A first-time buyer stretching on cash points toward a closing credit. A move-up buyer with equity but payment sensitivity points toward a buydown. A cash buyer makes the entire question moot.
What do inspections typically surface in your community? If your building’s roofs are the same age and three of them have been replaced in the past two years, you can predict the conversation.
Which segment are you in? A Reston detached seller at 102.3 percent of original list has different leverage from a condo seller at 98.3 percent against 107 other active units.
The point of settling this early is that a concession request arrives with a deadline attached. Working out your position under that pressure produces worse decisions than working it out in advance.
The short version
Same $15,000. As a price cut it saves your buyer $87 a month and $1,500 in cash. As a closing credit it saves them $15,000 in cash. As a buydown it saves them somewhere between $186 and $247 a month. You net the same either way, so give the version that solves the problem your buyer actually has.
If showings are happening and offers keep stalling at financing, use a concession. If showings are not happening, fix the price. And if you want help working out which one your home is likely to need before you list, reach out. That conversation goes better before you are under contract.
