If you've checked your local listings and noticed your home's estimated value is still ticking up year over year, you might assume the market underneath it is basically fine. Prices are higher than they were last September, after all. But price and demand are two different stories right now, and the demand side just told a pretty clear one. Redfin reported this week that pending home sales, the number of buyers actually signing contracts, fell to their lowest level in almost three years for the four weeks ending September 13. That's not a blip. It's a trend that's been building for months, and it's worth understanding before you set a number on your own listing.
The pending sales figure landed at 299,126 on a seasonally adjusted basis, down 5.4% from a year ago and down 3.5% from the week before, according to Redfin. That's the softest reading since late 2023. And this isn't just one brokerage's weekly estimate talking. The National Association of Realtors released its own official Pending Home Sales Index the same day, and it told a similar story: contract activity for August was down 4.7% year over year nationally, even though it ticked up slightly from July. Two different organizations, two different methodologies, pointing at the same slowdown in buyers actually following through.
Meanwhile, the supply side of the market keeps expanding. NAR's separate Existing-Home Sales report, released earlier this month, showed total housing inventory crossed 1.6 million units in August for the first time since November 2019. Months' supply, a measure of how long it would take to sell everything currently on the market at the current pace, climbed to 4.9, the highest level in more than a decade according to NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun. Redfin's own weekly tally shows a similar shift, with months of supply at 4.1, up from 3.9 the week before. More homes for sale, fewer buyers writing offers. That combination is exactly what's been nudging leverage toward buyers all fall.
Here's the context that headlines tend to skip, though: none of this means home values are falling apart. The median sale price in Redfin's report actually rose 2% year over year to $397,633, and NAR's national median climbed 1.6% to $429,100, the 38th straight month of year-over-year price gains. So home prices, on average, are still higher than they were a year ago. What's changed is how hard buyers are working to get there, and how much patience they're bringing to the process.
Part of what's driving buyer hesitation is simple math. Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey put the 30-year fixed average at 6.95% as of September 17, up from 6.76% the week before and the highest print in over a year. Rates moving in that direction tend to price some buyers out of the market entirely and push others to keep waiting, hoping for relief that may or may not come. HouseJet has been tracking this rate-and-inventory combination closely, because it's the kind of thing that changes how a listing should be priced from day one, not something to react to after it's already sat for six weeks.
What This Means If You're Selling Right Now
The share of listings taking a price cut climbed to 20.8% in Redfin's latest reading, up from 19.7% the week before. At the same time, 25.1% of homes that did sell went for more than asking, up slightly from 24.5%. Those two numbers together aren't a contradiction. They describe a market where homes priced accurately for what's actually closing nearby are still generating competition, and homes priced off last spring's comps are the ones getting marked down weeks later.
Here's the catch, though, and it's an important one: a slower pace of contract signings doesn't mean nobody's buying. It means the buyers who are out there have more options to compare and less urgency to settle for the first thing that fits. Genuinely serious buyers are still moving. They're just doing more homework first.
Price to the last 30 to 45 days, not the last six months. An agent pulling comps from this spring, when inventory was tighter and pending sales were stronger, will hand you a number that's likely to look aggressive against what's actually closing in your neighborhood right now. The homes selling fastest in this environment are the ones priced against current activity, not the market that existed before rates climbed back toward 7%.
Build negotiating room into your expectations before you list, not during a counteroffer. With price cuts becoming more common and buyers taking their time, it's worth deciding in advance how you'll handle a request for repair credits or a longer closing timeline. Deciding that calmly before an offer lands tends to go a lot better than deciding it under pressure.
Talk to your agent about where your specific market sits, not the national number. Redfin's own data shows enormous variation by metro. Pending sales dropped more than 20% year over year in Seattle and more than 14% in Atlanta and Houston, while Fort Lauderdale and Miami actually saw pending sales rise. A national headline about a three-year low tells you almost nothing about whether your street is slow or still moving.
If you're already listed and traffic has gone quiet, that's worth a direct conversation with your agent about where your price sits relative to what's actually under contract nearby, not necessarily a sign the whole market has stalled. If you're planning to list this fall or early next year, it's worth getting your pricing strategy locked in now, since the gap between supply and demand doesn't look like it's closing anytime soon. And if you're a buyer reading this instead of a seller, this is the kind of environment that tends to reward patience and a willingness to negotiate, rather than a reason to rush.
None of this is cause for alarm. It's a market that's rebalancing after several years of being tilted hard toward whoever was selling. A slower market and a weak one aren't the same thing, and the data backs that up: prices are still climbing, just at a pace that finally matches how carefully buyers are shopping. Price it for the market that exists today, not the one from six months ago, and the rest of the process tends to take care of itself.
