US pending home sales sink near 12-year low as rates top 7%: Report
Mortgage rates near 7%, what should home buyers do?
With interest rates near 7%, realtor Wendy Uzelac explains the best practices if you're thinking about buying a home.
(FOX 9) - A new report shows higher mortgage rates pushed more buyers to the sidelines in September even as more homes came onto the market.
Real estate slowdown
What we know:
Pending sales dropped across the country in September, according to a recent report from Redfin, as sales fell 4% from a month earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis, with pending sales at their lowest level since spring 2014, aside from April 2020 when the pandemic brought the housing market to a halt.
The report says that 14.5% of home buying deals fell through in September, while closed home sales also fell 1.6% from a month earlier to their lowest level since the end of 2023.
Dig deeper:
Redfin said pending sales declined in all 50 of the most populous metros for the first time in three years.
Meanwhile, the weekly average mortgage rate climbed to 7.28% at the end of September, the highest level in three years.
Why you should care:
Rising mortgage rates and still-high prices are pricing some buyers out, but price growth is losing momentum.
The median U.S. home-sale price rose 1.3% from a year earlier to $393,895 in September, the smallest increase since February, while the median asking price fell 0.5% from a month earlier and rose 0.6% from a year earlier, the smallest annual increase since April.
According to Redfin, 60.5% of homes that sold in September went for less than their original asking price, extending an 18-month streak of roughly three in five homes selling below asking.
A total of 19.8% of sellers with active listings cut their asking price, the report outlines.
The Source: Information provided by a September 2026 Redfin housing market report.