If you are getting ready to list your home, you have probably seen a headline somewhere about pending home sales falling across the country. That part is true at the national level, but it does not tell you much about what is actually happening where you live, and the gap between the national number and your local market could change how you think about timing your listing this fall.
The National Association of Realtors released its Pending Home Sales report on September 17, 2026, covering contract activity in August. Nationally, pending home sales rose 0.3 percent from July to August, but were down 4.7 percent compared to August of the previous year, according to NAR. NAR Chief Economist Dr. Lawrence Yun said buyers steadily entered into contracts in August even though mortgage rates increased, but he described the housing market as still sluggish, with contract signings running below last year's pace. He attributed that gap to higher mortgage rates offsetting the extra buying power that job gains and income growth have created, since home price growth has not kept pace with those income gains in most places.
That national figure hides a lot of regional variation, and the regional breakdown in NAR's report is where things get more interesting if you are weighing a fall listing. The South posted a 2.3 percent month over month increase in pending sales, though it was still down 3.8 percent year over year. The West saw an even larger month over month gain, up 3.0 percent, but its year over year decline was the steepest of the four regions at 6.7 percent, according to NAR. The Northeast and Midwest moved the opposite direction month over month, with the Northeast down 4.2 percent and the Midwest down 1.6 percent from July to August, and both regions posted year over year declines as well, at 3.9 percent and 4.9 percent respectively, per the same NAR release. Yun pointed out that the Northeast and Midwest saw the fastest home price growth in August, which he said is part of the reason those two regions posted the steepest declines in contract signings, since rising prices on top of higher rates can price out more buyers in those markets.
What the Local Numbers Say That the National Number Does Not
NAR's release also pointed to metro level data from Realtor.com Economics showing which markets bucked the national trend entirely. Among the 50 largest metro areas, several posted year over year increases in pending home sales rather than decreases. Richmond, Virginia led with an 11.3 percent increase. San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas followed at 6.6 percent, and Memphis, Tennessee-Mississippi-Arkansas came in at 6.4 percent. Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, Virginia-North Carolina rose 5.1 percent, while Cincinnati, Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana gained 4.7 percent. Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas was up 4.2 percent, Birmingham, Alabama rose 4.0 percent, and Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, California, Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, Indiana, and St. Louis, Missouri-Illinois posted smaller but still positive gains of 1.7 percent, 0.9 percent, and 0.2 percent respectively, according to the Realtor.com data cited in NAR's report. None of those ten metros are in the same region, which is itself a sign that whatever is driving local contract activity up has more to do with local supply, local pricing, and local job conditions than with any single national trend.
If your metro is anywhere near that list, or even just in the South or West region where month over month activity picked up, the national headline about a 4.7 percent year over year decline may simply not describe what buyers in your area are doing right now. Pending sales are considered a leading indicator, meaning they reflect contracts signed in the past month or two rather than closed sales that may have been under contract for a while. A rise in your local pending sales count suggests buyer activity is building in your area even while the national count moves the other way, and that distinction is easy to miss if you only read the national headline.
This is why checking your own metro's numbers matters more than reacting to a national headline. You can ask your agent to pull local pending and new listing data for your specific market, or look at NAR's and Realtor.com's published regional and metro breakdowns yourself before you decide on a listing timeline. A market where contract signings are rising month over month, even modestly, tends to behave differently than one where they are falling, and that difference can affect how long your home sits on the market and how buyers respond to your initial list price. It also affects how much negotiating room you are likely to have once an offer comes in, since a market with more active buyers per listing generally gives sellers more leverage on terms, not just price.
It is also worth remembering that NAR's Pending Home Sales Index measures contract activity relative to a baseline set back in 2001, when annual existing home sales volume fell in the 5.0 to 5.5 million range that NAR considers a normal level for the current population. Yun noted that nationally, contract signings today are running roughly 30 percent below where they were in the years leading up to the pandemic, when mortgage rates near 3 percent pulled transaction activity to a historic high that has not been matched since. That context matters for understanding the scale of today's market, but it does not mean every metro is equally far below that baseline. Some of the markets posting year over year gains, like Richmond and San Antonio, appear to be moving back toward more typical activity levels faster than the country as a whole.
None of this tells you what mortgage rates or home prices will do next, and you should be skeptical of anyone who claims they can predict either with confidence based on one month of pending sales data. What the data does tell you is that the real estate market right now is not one uniform story playing out the same way from coast to coast. It is a collection of metro level stories, and based on NAR's own numbers, some of those stories look considerably better for sellers than the national average would suggest, while a few look tougher than the national average as well.
Before you set your listing timeline or your price expectations this fall, it is worth the extra step of looking past the national headline and into the numbers for your specific region and metro. Pull the regional figures NAR publishes with each report, and if your agent can get you metro specific pending sales or new listing data, ask for it directly rather than relying on a general sense of where the market is. The next NAR Pending Home Sales report, covering September data, is scheduled for release on October 20, 2026, and it will be worth checking at that point whether your region's August trend held steady, improved, or reversed before you finalize how you want to approach your sale.
