Redfin data shows home-sale prices dipped as pending home sales set a new record low
Home-sale prices in the United States fell year over year for the third consecutive week, marking the first sustained pullback after three years of gains, according to data from Redfin, the real estate brokerage powered by Rocket.
The median home-sale price stood at $388,604 for the four weeks ending November 1, a 0.4% decline from a year earlier.
The median monthly mortgage payment, seasonally adjusted, eased to $2,777 at a 7.24% rate. That's down from a five-week high of $2,811 in early October.
As forecasters tracking the broader market have noted, gradual affordability gains are expected to define 2026. Those expectations now carry an additional warning: pending home sales fell 0.6% week over week to their lowest point in Redfin’s records, which date to 2021, declining across every metro the firm analyzed for a fourth consecutive week.
Sellers retreat as demand stalls
New listings dropped 1.5% week over week to their lowest level since January, as sellers pulled back from a soft market.
Total active inventory stood at approximately 1.5 million homes, up 2.1% from a year ago, while months of supply – a measure of how long it would take to sell all current listings at the current pace of sales – rose to 4.6 from 4.0.
Just 26.9% of homes went off market within two weeks, down from 28%, and the share of listings with price reductions edged up to 21.2% from 20.6%.
Regional performance split sharply. San Francisco posted the largest year-over-year price gain nationally at 17.3%, while Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Austin, Texas recorded the steepest declines at 5.9% and 5.8%, respectively.
Pending sales fell hardest in Seattle, San Diego, Atlanta, Denver, and Las Vegas.
Buyers gain leverage as home prices cool
For mortgage brokers, the data signals a narrow opening: sellers are more flexible and buyer competition has thinned.
But with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 7.18% for the week ending November 5, the third straight weekly decline, the pool of qualified buyers remains shallow.
Matt Gouge, mortgage broker and founding partner at UMortgage in California, captured the prevailing borrower mindset in an earlier interview with Mortgage Professional America.
“Buyers are coming to terms with the current state of affordability and housing. They’re just not fighting it anymore,” Gouge said.
As the broader pattern of sellers outpacing buyers across most US metros continues, Michael A. Harris, president and chief executive of United Mortgage Corporation of America, urged brokers not to let rate lock-in psychology undermine clients’ long-term planning.
“A low interest rate is valuable, but it should not become a financial or personal trap,” Harris told MPA.
“The best mortgage decision is not always the one with the lowest interest rate. It is the one that best supports the borrower’s overall financial goals.”
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