A suburban home with a for-sale sign. Illustrative archive photo: Pixabay / Pexels, used under the Pexels License. Cropped. Not a Redfin listing or identification of a property in the reported data.
U.S. home-sale prices edged lower again in late October, but the typical buyer’s mortgage payment remained nearly 11% above a year earlier. The split shows why slightly lower sale prices has not automatically made buying a home easier.
The median sale price was $389,601 for the four weeks ending October 25, down 0.1% year over year, according to Redfin’s October 29 housing report. It was the second consecutive weekly report showing a year-over-year decline, following a 0.2% drop in the prior report after more than three years of increases.
Redfin, a residential real estate brokerage, reported a seasonally adjusted median monthly mortgage payment of $2,786 at a 7.32% mortgage rate. The payment was up 10.7% from a year earlier and second only to the previous week’s reading in its records.
Lower prices, heavier monthly burden
The mortgage rate used in the report was down from 7.4% a week earlier, but remained near a three-year high. A small price decline can therefore coexist with a substantially higher monthly borrowing cost.
The national median is also not a price index tracking the same home through time. It describes the middle sale price of homes sold in the period. A 0.1% national decline does not mean every home lost that amount, or that a buyer in every market can obtain a discount.
For a household considering a purchase, the distinction is practical: a lower negotiated price and an affordable monthly payment are separate tests. This report offers evidence of weaker sales demand, not a promise that financing costs have become manageable.
Pending sales fell across the largest markets
Seasonally adjusted pending sales totaled 276,352, down 15.9% from a year earlier and 1.8% from the previous week. That was the lowest reading in Redfin’s weekly series, which dates to 2021, not an all-time national record stretching back through earlier housing cycles.
Pending sales declined year over year in all 50 of the most populous metro areas analyzed for the third straight week. The largest declines included Seattle at 31.6%, Atlanta at 25.9% and San Diego at 25.3%.
Signed contracts are not completed closings. The pending-sales measure helps show the pace of current buyer activity without establishing how many of those transactions will ultimately close.
Sellers pulled back, but inventory still increased
New listings fell 4% year over year to a seasonally adjusted 352,421, and were down 0.6% from the previous week. Yet active listings rose 2.2% from a year earlier to 1,510,619, up 0.3% week over week.
Redfin attributed the combination to pending sales falling more than new listings, leaving a larger pool of unsold homes even as fewer owners entered the market. Months of supply stood at 4.5, compared with four a year earlier. The brokerage describes four to five months as balanced.
Homes spent a median of 50 days on the market, one day longer than a year earlier. The share of listings with price drops was 21.5%, up from 20.9%, while 23.2% of homes sold above list price, unchanged from a year earlier. Those figures point to room for negotiation in some transactions, not a uniform market in which every seller must cut.
National softness masks local differences
Among the largest metros, Redfin reported median sale-price increases of 15% in San Francisco, 8.4% in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and 7.4% in Pittsburgh. Seattle’s median fell 5.1%, San Jose’s fell 4.9% and Austin’s fell 4.6%.
The contrast matters to both buyers and owners setting an asking price. A national decline can sit alongside a rising local median, and the mix of homes selling can affect each reading. Local comparable sales, the condition of a specific property and the buyer’s financing still matter.
Redfin’s national metrics cover more than 900 U.S. metro areas and homes listed or sold during the reporting period. The weekly figures are subject to revision. They are a snapshot of a slower market with expensive borrowing, not a forecast of where prices or mortgage rates will go next.
Real Estate Desk | NEW YORK
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