If you are shopping for a home this fall and feeling like the odds are stacked against you, a new set of numbers from the National Association of Realtors tells a more complicated story. The data, published in NAR's September 2026 Research Update covering August activity, shows a market that is slower overall but is quietly getting easier for first-time buyers to break into.
Start with the headline figure that sounds discouraging on its face. Existing-home sales fell 2.0 percent month over month in August and were down 1.2 percent from a year earlier, according to NAR. Sales held roughly steady in the West but declined across the Northeast, Midwest, and South. On the surface, that looks like a market losing momentum, and in terms of total transaction volume, it is. Fewer homes changed hands in August than in July, and fewer than in August of last year.
But a slower overall market is not the same thing as a worse market for you specifically, and that is where the rest of NAR's numbers matter more. The Housing Affordability Index, which NAR calculates based on income, home prices, and prevailing mortgage rates, registered at 104.7 in the most recent reading, up from 101.2 a year ago. That is a meaningful improvement, and it was not confined to one region. Affordability gains showed up everywhere: the Northeast improved 0.5 percent, the Midwest 1.7 percent, the South 4.5 percent, and the West 5.9 percent, all compared with a year earlier, according to NAR's data. If you have been assuming affordability only moves in one direction, this is worth sitting with for a moment.
The clearest sign that this improvement is reaching real buyers, not just showing up in an index, comes from NAR's Realtors Confidence Index. First-time homebuyers accounted for 30 percent of August sales, up from 29 percent in July and up from 28 percent a year earlier, per NAR. That three-month climb is small in any single reading, but the direction matters. It suggests that people who do not already own a home and do not have existing equity to lean on are finding a way into the market in slightly larger numbers than they were a year ago, even with mortgage rates still elevated.
Part of what may be opening that door is a pullback from all-cash buyers, who have historically outcompeted financed buyers on speed and certainty. Cash sales made up 27 percent of August transactions, NAR reported, up slightly from 26 percent the prior month but down from 28 percent a year earlier. A smaller share of cash competition, even a modest one, can matter a great deal if you are relying on a mortgage and have been losing out to buyers who do not need financing contingencies in a bidding situation.
There is also more time on the clock than there was earlier this year. The median number of days a property sat on the market before going under contract was 31 in August, NAR found, up from 29 the month before, though unchanged from the 31 days recorded in August 2025. A longer runway between listing and contract gives you more room to schedule showings, line up an inspector, and make a considered offer instead of feeling rushed into a decision within the first weekend a home is listed.
Put these pieces together and a picture emerges that is different from the one you get by looking at sales volume alone. Fewer transactions are closing, yes, but the buyers who are closing deals increasingly include people buying their first home, facing somewhat less competition from all-cash offers, and working with slightly more time to make decisions. None of that erases the affordability challenges that have defined this market for the past several years. It does suggest those challenges are easing in measurable, if incremental, ways, even if the pace of that easing is slow and uneven from one region to the next.
None of these figures predict where rates or prices go from here, and treating any single month of data as a turning point is its own kind of mistake. What this report does offer is a more textured read on where the actual opportunity sits right now compared with a year ago. A rising first-time buyer share and a shrinking cash-buyer edge are the kind of structural details that tend to matter more to someone actually house hunting than a single affordability index number does on its own, because they describe who is actually winning offers, not just whether the math on paper looks slightly better.
What should you take from this if you are actively house hunting? First, do not assume that a report showing sales volume down is automatically bad news for your specific search. Volume and affordability move somewhat independently, and right now the affordability side of the equation is improving even as the volume side cools. Second, pay attention to how long homes in your target neighborhoods are sitting on the market before you write an offer. A median of 31 days nationally means there is more room than there was a year or two ago to take your time on due diligence, though local conditions can vary significantly from the national figure, so check recent local listings rather than relying on the national median alone.
Third, if you have been assuming you are perpetually outgunned by cash buyers, the August data suggests that gap narrowed slightly, even if it has not closed. That does not mean competition has disappeared. It means the playing field tilted a bit less steeply against financed buyers than it did a year ago, which is worth knowing before you decide how aggressive your offer needs to be and how much of your own savings you feel you need to put on the table to compete.
Finally, remember that national figures describe an average across four very different regions, and the regional breakdowns in this same report show real variation. Affordability improved the most in the West and South year over year, while the Northeast saw a smaller gain. Sales volume held up better in the West than elsewhere. If you are shopping outside those regions, treat the national numbers as context rather than a direct description of your local market, and look for local inventory and days-on-market data to confirm whether the same patterns are showing up where you are actually searching before you lean too heavily on a national average.
