Weekly Real Estate News
Summary
More than one in five U.S. listings had a price reduction in September as inventory increased and the stock of homes under contract fell 4.1% from a year earlier.
More than one in five U.S. homes for sale had a price reduction in September as higher mortgage rates pushed buyers back and left sellers competing for a smaller pool of demand.
The share of active listings with a price cut reached 20.8%, up 0.9 percentage points from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com’s September 2026 Monthly Housing Trends Report released Wednesday. It was the highest September reading since 2018 and the highest monthly share since October 2022.
The same report shows why sellers are adjusting. Active inventory rose 5.4% from a year ago to 1,161,615 homes, while the stock of homes under contract fell 4.1%. That was the second consecutive annual decline in pending inventory and the steepest drop since March 2025.
The combination is shifting negotiating power toward buyers, but it is not producing a rush of transactions. Mortgage rates climbed nearly 40 basis points over the four weeks preceding the report and stood more than 70 basis points above their year-earlier level, according to Realtor.com.
“September’s housing data shows that buyers are gaining leverage, but higher mortgage rates are limiting how much of that opportunity they can use,” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said in the report.
Inventory is recovering for a different reason
The number of homes available for sale is moving closer to normal. September inventory was 5.2% below its 2019 level, and Realtor.com said the broader gap to typical pre-pandemic inventory narrowed to 9.1%, falling below 10% for the first time in the current recovery.
That improvement does not mean sellers are flooding the market. New listings totaled 394,830, down 0.7% from September 2025 and 1.7% from August.
“More homes are available than they were a year ago, and the inventory gap with the pre-pandemic market is closing,” Realtor.com Senior Economist Jake Krimmel said. “But the source of that improvement matters. It is arriving as demand cools in response to higher borrowing costs, not because a new wave of sellers is rushing into the market.”
The national median list price was $419,250, down 1.4% from a year earlier and 1.2% from August. September marked the 11th consecutive month with an annual decline in the median list price. Price per square foot fell 1.7% year over year.
Those are asking-price measures, not closed-sale prices, and the distinction matters. Price reductions also measure changes to sellers’ asking prices rather than the final prices buyers ultimately pay.
The latest numbers extend a shift WRE News documented in late August, when rising inventory was already colliding with weaker buyer demand. September’s Realtor.com data show that pressure becoming more visible in seller pricing.
Salt Lake City leads the largest metros in price cuts
The adjustment is especially pronounced in parts of the West.
Price reductions appeared on 22.8% of western listings in September, the highest share among the four regions and 1.8 percentage points above a year earlier. The South followed at 21.6%, the Midwest at 20.7% and the Northeast at 15.2%.
Among the 50 largest metropolitan areas, Salt Lake City had the highest share of price-reduced listings at 33.6%. Denver followed at 32.1%, with Portland, Oregon, at 31.6%.
The divide is also visible in asking prices. On a price-per-square-foot basis, 37 of the 50 largest metros recorded annual declines. Austin posted the largest drop at 8.4%, followed by Tampa at 6% and San Francisco at 4.3%. Providence, Indianapolis and Hartford recorded the largest increases.
Nationally, 43 of the 50 largest metros had more active listings than a year earlier.
Sellers are cutting rather than pulling listings
One of the more consequential details in the September report is what sellers have not done.
About 5.6% of homes on the market were delisted during the month, roughly in line with a year ago. Realtor.com found no broad spike in owners abandoning their listings. Instead, more are attempting to stay in the market by reducing the asking price.
That creates a different fall market from one in which inventory improvement is driven primarily by a surge in new sellers. Buyers have more choices because homes are accumulating while fewer properties move under contract.
For lenders, brokers and real estate agents, the immediate question is whether seller concessions and lower asking prices can overcome the payment shock created by higher borrowing costs. So far, the pending-sales figures suggest that price flexibility alone has not been enough.
Homes spent a median 61 days on the market in September, one day fewer than a year ago. That relative stability also argues against reading the national price-cut figure as evidence of a broad housing collapse. The data instead describe a market in which affordability is suppressing demand while sellers increasingly acknowledge that buyers have alternatives.
Realtor.com said it will be watching whether deeper or repeated price reductions translate into more signed contracts and whether sellers begin removing more homes from the market if higher rates persist.
For now, the split is clear: inventory is getting closer to pre-pandemic levels, but the buyer base needed to absorb it is moving in the opposite direction.
