Housing Market

KB Home reports Tuesday, August new home sales land Thursday and Freddie Mac’s survey delivers the first full rate read after the Fed’s hike. What to watch the week of Sept. 21.

The Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023, mortgage rates jumped to 6.95%, builder confidence hit a one-year low and Lennar cut its delivery target. What changed for housing this week.

Sellers gave buyers concessions in 44.7% of U.S. home sales in August, the highest August share in Redfin’s records, with roughly seven in 10 Atlanta, Charlotte and Phoenix deals including one.

Closed single-family sales in Florida fell about 1.5% in August and a 12-month run of pending-sales gains ended. Listings kept shrinking anyway, down 13% for single-family homes, and the statewide median price rose for a sixth straight month.

The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index fell three points to 32 in September, its lowest reading since September 2025, as 38% of builders cut prices and 66% turned to sales incentives.

A group of competing real estate companies and trade groups launched Let America Build on Sept. 15, a national awareness campaign aimed at local zoning, permitting and land-use rules. No budget was disclosed.

Households’ real estate assets reached $49.8 trillion in the second quarter and owners’ equity $35.8 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve’s Z.1 accounts. Mortgage and home-equity debt grew 3.0% year over year against a 2.5% gain in asset values.

Airbnb committed an initial $250 million in last-dollar financing to rental projects that are permitted but short of the capital needed to break ground, saying it expects to unlock more than $5 billion over ten years. The first investment is $6.4 million for 201 affordable units in Austin, Texas.

A Zillow analysis published Sept. 14 finds 1.42 million residential permits issued in the year through July 2026, down 1.7%, with detached single-family completions falling to about 817,000 and the steepest pullbacks in Austin and San Antonio.

The Fed decides Wednesday with fresh projections, and builder sentiment, housing starts and pending home sales all land within 48 hours of it.

Shelter inflation cooled while mortgage rates climbed to 6.76%, existing-home sales slipped below 4 million and an $8.1 billion apartment merger landed. The week that set up the Fed’s Sept. 16 decision.

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent in August and 3.4 percent over the year, but shelter costs eased to a 3.0 percent annual pace days before the Federal Reserve meets.

Existing-home sales fell 2.0% in August to a 3.98 million annual rate while inventory topped 1.6 million units for the first time since November 2019, the National Association of Realtors said Sept. 10.

The August Employment Situation report beat forecasts by a wide margin and revised June and July higher, pushing the Federal Reserve further from a rate cut. Construction added 22,000 jobs, with residential trades gaining and nonresidential building slipping.

Investors accounted for 27% of U.S. single-family home purchases between March and June, down from 28%, Cotality reported. The headline share barely moved, but the volume underneath it did: investors bought about 40,000 fewer homes than a year earlier, and the largest landlords accounted for a quarter of that drop.

Mortgage rates reached a 13-month high, new listings hit their highest level since 2022, construction spending slipped again, and Rocket named a new chief executive at Redfin. Here are the eight stories that shaped the week in real estate.

A holiday-shortened week with one release that matters: August CPI lands Friday morning, the last major inflation reading before the Fed meets Sept. 15-16. Fed officials are in blackout all week, so the data will have to speak for itself.

New listings climbed 8% year over year to the most since August 2022, but demand stayed flat as mortgage rates crept back toward 7%, according to Redfin data for the four weeks ending Aug. 30.

NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index for the second quarter shows single-family construction contracting almost everywhere while apartment building concentrates in large metro cores and suburbs.

A hawkish Jackson Hole debut, sticky PCE inflation, a 10.5% drop in new home sales and the end of RE/MAX as an independent company — the week’s biggest real estate stories in one place.

Construction spending Tuesday, Freddie Mac’s rate survey Thursday and the August jobs report Friday — the last full data week before the Fed’s September meeting.

New single-family home sales fell to a 607,000 annual rate in July, but only the Midwest’s 42.7% collapse and a rise in unsold inventory clear the Census Bureau’s statistical significance test.

S&P Cotality Case-Shiller and FHFA both showed home prices accelerating modestly in June, but housing lost ground to inflation for a 13th straight month and the Midwest-West gap kept widening.