Existing-Home Sales Rose in September, but Buyers Are the Ones Gaining Leverage

By Previously Staff, Previously

October 13, 2026

Sales ticked up 1.5% in September to a 3.99 million annual rate, yet the bigger story in the National Association of Realtors data is inventory at its highest since 2019 — and sellers being told to price realistically.

Existing-home sales rose in September — and the buyers are the ones gaining leverage. That is the twin story in the September housing numbers: more existing homes changed hands than in August, which is welcome news for anyone who makes a living in this market, while the balance of power quietly and steadily shifted toward the people doing the buying. That tension runs through the entire report the National Association of Realtors released on Tuesday, and it is probably the most honest snapshot we have had of American housing in a long while.

According to the National Association of Realtors, sales of previously owned homes rose 1.5% in September from the month before, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.99 million units. That was a touch better than the roughly 3.95 million pace economists polled by Reuters had expected. Look at the longer view, though, and the market is still running cooler than last year: sales were down 2.2% compared with September a year ago. A monthly gain inside an annual decline is not a boom. It is a market trying, not quite succeeding, to find its footing.

The Inventory Story Is the Real Story

If you read only one number in this report, make it the inventory figure. There were 1.60 million previously owned homes for sale at the end of September, up 1.9% from August and up 4.6% from a year earlier. Reuters noted that is the largest supply since November 2019 — in other words, the most choice buyers have had since before the pandemic reshaped everything about housing. Expressed the way the industry prefers, that stock equals about 4.8 months of supply at the current sales pace, unchanged from August and up from 4.5 months a year ago.

Four-point-eight months matters because of what it is not. During the frantic pandemic years, supply collapsed to levels where buyers waived inspections, bid far over asking and still lost. A market approaching five months of supply is not a buyer's market in the textbook sense — that label usually starts around six months — but it is a long way from the seller's frenzy. Homes are sitting longer, listings are accumulating instead of vanishing in a weekend, and that changes the conversation at every kitchen table where an offer is being written.

Prices Are Still Rising, Just Barely

Sellers still holding out for pandemic-style price growth got another gentle correction. The median price of an existing home sold in September was $417,500, up 1.3% from $412,300 a year earlier. The National Association of Realtors pointed out that this marks the 39th consecutive month of year-over-year price increases, which sounds impressive until you look at the size of this one. A 1.3% annual gain, in an economy where general inflation has run hotter than that, means home values in real terms are essentially treading water.

That is not a crash, and nobody credible is calling it one. It is something subtler and, for first-time buyers, arguably healthier: a long, slow rebalancing in which prices stop sprinting away from incomes. The catch, of course, is that the monthly payment still decides who actually gets to buy, and on that front September offered no relief at all.

A 7.40% Mortgage Rate Changes Everything

Reuters, citing Freddie Mac data, reported that the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage climbed to 7.40% in the latest week, the highest level since November 2023, up from 7.28% the week before. At those levels, the arithmetic is unforgiving. A buyer who could comfortably carry a home at six-and-a-half percent may not qualify at seven-point-four, and a seller's pool of possible buyers shrinks with every upward tick. The National Association of Realtors' Housing Affordability Index slipped to 105.4, down from 106.7 a year ago — a modest-looking move that represents real households being priced to the edge of, or past, what lenders will approve.

Lawrence Yun, the association's chief economist, made that point plainly in remarks reported alongside the release. Paraphrasing his assessment: August and September ranked as the two slowest sales months of the year so far, rising mortgage rates mean fewer buyers can qualify, and the combination of higher inventory and longer time on market hands buyers genuine negotiating leverage. His advice, in effect, was aimed at sellers — price realistically, expect to negotiate, and understand that a discount today beats a stale listing tomorrow.

A Split Map: South and West Up, Northeast Down

Regionally, September was a patchwork. Month over month, sales rose in the South and the West, held flat in the Midwest, and fell in the Northeast, according to the National Association of Realtors. Year over year, every one of the four regions was down — a reminder that the monthly improvement, welcome as it is, has not yet lifted any part of the country above where it stood last fall.

That pattern makes intuitive sense. The South and West carried much of the pandemic-era building and migration boom, so they hold more of the inventory now loosening the market. The Northeast, with its older housing stock and chronic shortage of new construction, remains the tightest region in the country — which is precisely why a national story about growing buyer leverage can feel completely untrue to someone house-hunting outside Boston or New York. National averages describe a country; nobody buys a house in an average.

What This Means Heading Into the Fall

So where does September leave us? With a market that is neither frozen nor free. Sales beat expectations, barely. Prices rose, barely. Inventory improved, genuinely. And borrowing costs went the wrong way, unmistakably. For buyers with stable incomes and pre-approvals in hand, this may quietly be the best negotiating environment in six years — more choice, longer timelines, and sellers who are finally being told by their own industry's economist to meet the market. For buyers stretched thin, none of that matters until rates cooperate.

Our take is simple: watch inventory, not headlines. If supply keeps building toward five and then six months while rates stay near seven-and-a-half percent, the discounts Lawrence Yun is urging sellers to consider will stop being advice and start being the market itself. September did not flip the housing market. But it showed, in clean numbers from the National Association of Realtors and in Reuters' reporting, which way the leverage is drifting — and for the first time in years, it is drifting toward the buyer. More business coverage is on the Previously news front through the day.