Since December 2022 sales have gone nowhere. 
The National Association of Realtors reports Existing-Home Sales Increased 1.5% in September
Existing-home sales increased by 1.5% in September 2026. Month over month sales increased in the South and West, while holding steady in the Midwest and declining in the Northeast. Year over year sales declined in all four regions.
“Despite the small monthly gain on a seasonally adjusted basis, August and September marked the two slowest months for home sales this year,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “Further increases in mortgage rates in recent weeks mean fewer buyers can qualify to purchase a home.”
Yun continued, “Higher inventory and lengthening days on market give buyers improved negotiating power. Home sellers need to be realistic about local market conditions, which could require price discounts and other incentives to attract buyers.”
Existing-Home Sales Month-Over-Month
Changes have been essentially trendless for years.
Key September 2026 Statistics
- Month-Over-Month: 1.5% increase in existing-home sales to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.99 million in September
- Sales Year-Over-Year: 2.2% decrease in existing-home sales.
- Inventory Units: Total housing inventory reached 1.60 million units, up 1.9% from August and 4.6% from September 2025.
- Inventory Supply: 4.8 months’ supply, unchanged from August and up from 4.5 months one year ago.
- Median existing-home price: The median existing-home price for all housing types was $417,500.
- Price Change From Year Ago: Prices increased 1.3% from one year ago ($412,300), marking the 39th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains.
- Market Time: 31 days: Median time on market for properties, 33 days, up from 31 days in August and unchanged from September 2025.
Truly Nonsensical NAR Measures of Affordability
- The Housing Affordability Index registered at 105.4, down from 106.7 one year ago.
- Northeast: -4.5%
- Midwest: -3.1%
- South: -0.4%
- West: +1.0%
For August, the Housing Affordability Index registered at 104.7, up from 101.2 a year ago.
If homes were more affordable, more homes would be selling.
Existing-Home Sales Year-Over-Year
Existing Home Sales Supply
The NAR does not seasonally adjust much of its data as evidenced by the above chart.
Nonetheless, we can see rising supply over time. But rising supply has not helped sales. And growth in supply seems to have stalled.
Existing-Home Sales vs Mortgage Rates
There are sometime jumps in sales when rates drop. However, there has not been any lasting traction.
Sales have basically gone nowhere even as rates fell from 7.62 percent to 6.05 percent.
But rates have risen again. The current Mortgage News Daily rate is 7.46 percent.
MND is more accurate than the Freddie Mac data in my chart because it includes points and fees. I use Freddie Mac data because I have a download from the St. Louis Fed.
Three Key Conclusions
- Home prices are too high, mortgage rates are too high, or both, for most people.
- There is a pool of price-insensitive buyers, around 4 million annualized, who are able and willing to buy regardless of point one.
- If we see a sustained decline in the stock market, a recession, or other economic shock, point two will not hold.
Point 3 above is my big caution.
Synopsis
- Real Income falling
- Home prices rising
- Mortgage rates rising
- Until this month, Yun claims affordability is improving
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Thinking about this post led me to the two most common largest leveraged purchases made in the US are houses and automobiles. Interest rates have roughly doubled pushing payments up roughly 30% to 40% which will slow turnover since many will not want to give up a much lower interest rate on an existing loan. couple this with many new entries into the market not being able to afford either a new home or auto and it is no wonder that the markets are stagnating.
A complicating factor is the fed is impotent to influence the market positively by lowering rates as doing might but probably not favorably impact loan rates, it would fuel inflation raising house prices. This suggest housing and automotive are not going to get affordability assistance therefore have to get sorted on their own. This will be interesting.
those are recorded sales i imagine. not all states/counties require that. i remember in panic of 2008 to 2012 in phoenix plunging market, thousands of home sales went unrecorded. especially the big hedge funds that came in and bought at fire sale prices
The fact that data has been hugging a round number — 4 million — for four straight years screams manipulation of the data. It’s like Harry Markopolos with Bernie Madoff. This is not a pattern that can occur naturally.
Maybe not. That may be the number of people who die and the children sell their homes, plus people who actually need to move for work. Both numbers are probably fairly stable.
Well, I think the data that existing home sales are “stuck” at about 4 million annualized sales is indicative of good news for at least some segments of the population. I will focus on the elderly.
The fact that an unprecedented percentage of older adults can comfortably remain in their own homes is a major triumph of modern society. Far fewer elderly are forced to leave their homes and move in with their children, either from an economic perspective (a large percentage of the eledrly now own their homes mortgage free) or a social interaction perspective (e-commerce, grocery delivery, ride-sharing, ride-hailing apps, and telehealth all have decoupled independence from physical mobility). Predictions from a decade ago that there would be a mass wave of boomers selling their homes in the late 2020s were completely wrong, because they missed these trends. Transaction-based businesses (real estate brokerages, mortgage lenders, title companies, moving services) that rely on turnover to generate revenue are going to loudly rant about the failure of existing home sales to increase because a homeowner staying in a paid-off home represents lost revenue to them. But it is is very good news for the elderly who are now free to choose to stay in their homes, which is part of the reason that the number of sales isn’t budging.
So there is actually some good news underlying the data.
Well as long as seniors are happy then that’s all that matters. 😵
Their kids are a lot happier than they would be if mom and dad moved in.
I guess since they are saving so much money on everything we should cut social security and medicare then maybe young folks will have a chance.
The thing the young folks don’t get is that they wont always be young.
took an hour cab ride other night in nyc. bangladeshi 45 year old driver. as he explained to me, his pals from rural bangledish come to amerika and drive cabs all day and night. never eat out meals and work hard from age 20 to 45 and then retire. he owned a few rental properties plus his own living house with no debt. he said that is the model for all his chinese immigrant pals. i went to school for decades with these folks, and good friends with them. guess what. they know how easy it is in usa to make it. i’m lazy amerikan but i never ever went out for dinner when i was a kid, or until i was about 45 years old. just brown bagged my lunches and saved my money…….born on 3rd base being born in usa the past 90 years. just face it. life here is easy. in spite of the evil warmongering wasting trillions on department of war and CIA……….
The old bags in their Buicks were trying to mow down Rosty in the northwest side supermarket parking lots in the mid-‘80s.
Let’s not forget to cut government pensions too.
Eh you got it backwards. Middle aged kids (+ dependents) moving in to Mom and dads oversized underpriced home more like
bingo. winner. i know 2, sixty somethings and their kids who have moved into their 85 year old mothers house. so we are talking about boomers and their loser kids who are the grifters. people like MPO who just blame one generation for the evil empire of warmongering are missing the forest in the trees. pro tip, the millenials and the under 40 crowd are also nihilists just like their parents and grandparents and their great grandparents ages. amerika has been a world wide imperial warmongering evil empire annihilating innocent humans on planet for a few shekels since at least 1898 and the spanish war under Teddy. to have the hubris to think that one generation is to blame and not look in the mirror is mind boggling to me. i studied anthropology for decades. been going to college since 1978 including this semester. best to stop and ponder what you THINK is correct, just is NOT. i find every semester something that i believed is just not true. give it a shot MPO
No this is edgelord bs
Preach. They ain’t having the babies we need to keep this shit spinning
“The good news is you don’t get to own a home or have anything so Grandpa can keep his three bedroom house or downsize to one of the handful of starter houses you might have been able to buy. Isn’t that exciting 20-40 year olds? Why aren’t you clapping!?”
every decade that goes by, the amount of calories amerikans have to expend to buy a calorie of food keeps going down. in other words, life keeps getting easier, due to mostly scientific and productive and automation of work. much of the 8billion human primates on planet are enjoying this too. ray kurzweil book, the singularity is near explains it best. imho. smartest man on planet, in my estimation.
“Just eat your tubeslop peasant, it’s cheaper than ever to buy butter. Why can’t you just live on that alone? Plenty of calories!”
Meanwhile the price of fruits and vegetables skyrockets. Wonder what happens when people finally have enough of no food.
All true. Would apply to The Greatest and Silents, too. The only debt they had was the fixed rate mortgage, usually 15 year term max. No Heathcare Hoodlums. No Higher Ed vanity arms race. No HGTV. The owner knew which end of a paint brush, hammer and saw to hold.
the mortgages on farms and houses during the great depression were mostly 5 year balloon payments. standard for the old days. the punks today have been shit on no doubt. by the boomers. but that is the amerikan way. the boomers parents sent them off to fight viet nam. a total grifter war for the MICC.
No mandatory braces on the kids’ teeth (big money-saver).
Not always. My silent divorced mom took a 30 year mortgage out in 1992 and still had a sizable mortgage balance when she sold in 2013.
But we were all told by 5D thinking MAGA commenters that as soon as Trump deported millions housing prices would come down because, you know, all those job stealing immigrants were buying up all the properties with all their welfare benefits. Who’s buying the houses now? Why is no one selling? What’s going on?
And Trump was going to lower rates making housing affordable again. And all the wars were going to stop. And tariffs were going to replace income taxes and we’d all get $2000, $5000 or $1 million checks in the mail. And we were all going to get tired of winning.
Well I think people are way tired now but not of winning.
Who’s going to save people now? democrats? doubling down on repubs?
Well rather than buy rental properties, I’ve been buying TLT. I’m up to $2000/month in interest from uncle sam and don’t have to worry about repair, maintenance, property taxes, insurance or remodeling. And the future (interest) looks bright! Thanks taxpayers!
“It’s Trump turtles all the way down and inflation all the way up!”
Turns out a lot of those guys were building houses for us…
It’s funny that people are complaining they can’t find suckers to buy their houses and that’s typically what immigrants do, buy up these old unmaintained homes and fix them up.
I’m watching curiously to see how long it takes for these nitwits to figure it out and put the pieces together.
capitalism fails when it doesn’t have a constant growing pool of suckers consuming which is why I harp about the demographic death spiral so much. Not too many bright people here to figure it out either.
This is the best website for ongoing anthropological study of primates.
“I’ve been buying TLT. I’m up to $2000/month in interest”… And the rest of the story is TLT is down nearly 50% over the last five years and the dollar purchasing power has concurrently declined significantly. Investing in the pipeline ETF AMLP would have paid around 6% plus annually while appreciating nearly 43% over the last five years compensating for lost dollar purchasing power.
The median rent in NYC is now $5015 in Manhattan average rent is $6895. In Brooklyn median is Around $4900
Rents are up 9% year over year .
But we were told everyone is leaving big cities, especially the blue ones. And we were told that Mamdani’s communist tax system would drive away all the billionaires and millionaires so why is rent up with everyone fleeing the city?
told by who? morons in alabama with 3 teeth ?
rented a whole house in brooklyn for 3500. safe, working class haitian and carribean hood. the blacks seem to scare many. safest hoods imho. my kid rents for 2900. landlord lowered the rent. no auto needed. saves probably 10k per annum. salaries and tips and self employed in nyc make big bucks. easiest town to get rich. besides bay area
Who can afford fire ins these days.
Part of the 5.0-6.0% CPI monthly increase for September, released tomorrow, will be increased construction cost for new housing and spiff-up of not new homes on the market.
Tariffs, immigrate ICE activity, and rising input costs including diesel cost, add an estimated $10,900 to $18,500 (or roughly 3.3% to over 6%) directly to the cost of building a new single-family home, with broader labor and material pressures pushing total construction cost higher.
During recessions, the average time of peak-to-recovery-to-prior-peak average median household wages (currently about 87.5K) is about 8 years. The peak to recovery time this for the coming recession will very likely be longer with significant demand destruction for the housing manufacturing industry.
immigrant vice immigrate …
This is report for EXISTING homes. Now just under a million for a starter home is new normal in many places lie the NYC metro area plus of course property taxes and another $200-500 a month for train ticket to work
One more data point supporting Trump’s hottest economy ever, even better than during his first term, NOT! seems to be a contributing factor reflecting stagflation.
And there are 10 million vacant homes in the country….
where exactly? I don’t blame people for squatting in these homes who cares if they neighbors get pissed off..
recently, i lived for 4 years in little haiti hood in brooklyn. there were squatters in row house 2 doors from my house i rented. nice guys. worked like the devils as junk men driving around scavenging metal and selling it at the junk yard. nobody in that hood minded them. eventually the arabs that owned the place had the cops come as they put the house on market.
I knew a flight attendant who didn’t sell her mom’s house for 3 years. It was the house she grew up in and she lived very close to it so she could check on it every day.
The stock market can’t bust out fast enough. The longer this cancer grows, the rougher the remedy.
The more that bond yields rise, the sooner you’ll see a top in the stock market.
Of course then investors will rotate into bonds so I am not sure anything meaningful in terms of a remedy (not exactly sure what you consider a remedy) will happen.
The remedy is the American economy smashing back into the ground from its place in tulipmania cloud city. Regular people cannot make ends meet but the entire system is dedicated to corporate welfare, not theirs. Corporate socialism in America and the oligopoly it has spawned needed to die decades ago. The only way for it to die is for the government to be made literally unable to keep bailing out airlines and the “world’s richest man’s” companies with our money that they don’t even really have.
You are looking at a nation that has recently started paying off its mortgage with a credit card that has our names tied to it. It has to stop. Cuts to our bloated military alone would a significant turning of the tides away from this endless debt nightmare where you and I get to pay for Jeffrey and Donald to take trips to the island.
bingo. winner