Contract signings on U.S. homes fell 17% from a year earlier in October, to their lowest October level in Realtor.com’s records, while the number of homes for sale rose 7.4% to about 1.18 million. Those figures come from the listing site’s October 2026 monthly housing report, published Nov. 4.
The report, written by Jake Krimmel, says “almost everyone has pressed pause.” Buyers have lost purchasing power to higher mortgage rates. Sellers are listing fewer homes, but most are not cutting prices or withdrawing listings any faster than a year ago.
Demand: the steepest pullback in three years
Realtor.com tracks two measures of demand. One is the stock of homes under contract, which was down 10.5% from a year earlier, the largest annual decline since October 2023 and more than double September’s 4.1% drop. The other is the flow of new contract signings, which fell 17% year over year and 8.1% from September. The report says that is the steepest annual decline since March 2023.
October was the fourth month in a row with fewer signings than a year earlier. The annual declines have grown each month: 2.7% in July, 3.5% in August, 9.7% in September and now 17%.
Realtor.com ties the slowdown to mortgage rates. In its account, the 30-year rate peaked at 7.40% in mid-October after rising 74 basis points over six weeks, then eased to 7.24% in the Oct. 29 reading. The October average was 7.33%, 107 basis points above a year earlier. The report estimates that higher average rates alone have cut buyers’ purchasing power by 10.4% compared with October 2025, and that the same monthly principal-and-interest payment now supports a loan nearly 6% smaller than in late August.
Deals that are signed are mostly holding. The cancellation rate, the share of pending homes that went back on the market, was 7.8%, up only slightly from 7.5% both in September and a year ago. “The relevant margin remains homes failing to go under contract rather than those falling out of contract,” the report says.
Supply: closest to pre-pandemic levels yet
Active listings rose to 1,183,520. That was 1.9% more than in September and 7.4% more than a year earlier, the fourth straight month of faster growth and the quickest annual increase since February. Inventory is now 6.6% below typical 2017-2019 levels, down from 9.1% below in September and 11.1% below in August. Realtor.com calls it the narrowest gap since the pandemic.
The report says part of the increase is a base effect, because inventory was flat from July through October last year. It also argues that listings have kept growing every month since February, instead of peaking in late summer, which it sees as a sign that higher rates have slowed sales.
Inventory has not recovered evenly. The South (8.6%) and West (12.4%) now have more homes for sale than before the pandemic. The Northeast is still 40.2% below its 2017-2019 level, and the Midwest is 26.9% below, even though those regions had the fastest annual growth, at 16.5% and 13.8%. Among the 50 largest metros, 44 had more listings than a year earlier. The largest increases were in Buffalo (34.4%), Minneapolis (32.7%) and Seattle (30.6%). Jacksonville (down 10.9%), Miami (down 9.4%) and San Francisco (down 7.8%) had the steepest declines.
Sellers are holding back, not cutting prices
The new supply is not coming from more homes being listed. New listings fell to 357,268, down 7.5% from a year earlier, the steepest decline since September 2023. “You do not list into weak demand unless you need to,” the report says.
Owners already on the market are not showing distress either. The share of listings with a price cut was 20.5%, down 0.3 points from September, which ended a nine-month run of monthly increases, and up just 0.2 points from a year earlier. About 4.4% of active listings were delisted in October, compared with 4.6% a year earlier. Realtor.com notes that roughly 43% of current listings have ever had a price reduction, down from nearly 55% a year ago.
Price cuts were most common in Indianapolis (31.8% of listings), Denver (31.3%) and Portland (31.1%), and least common in New York (12.6%), Buffalo (12.8%) and Hartford (14.2%). In September, the price-cut share reached 20.8%, which the report describes as the highest in nearly four years.
Prices drift lower
The national median list price was $415,000, down 1% from September and 2.2% from a year earlier. That was the 12th consecutive annual decline, and it widened from 1.4% in September. Price per square foot fell 1.5%, less than the headline figure, which Realtor.com reads as a shift toward smaller homes on the market. The Midwest was the only region where list prices rose, by 0.8%. The Northeast fell 4.8%. Per square foot, Austin (down 8.2%), Tampa (down 5.2%) and Denver (down 3.6%) had the largest declines. Homes spent a median 63 days on the market, one day more than a year earlier.
Realtor.com’s base case is that mortgage rates stay above 7% in the near term. It says a drop in the 10-year Treasury yield “could restore some purchasing power, but it could also tempt buyers to wait for further progress.” The report also notes that rising inventory alone does not make a market buyer-friendly if sellers do not cut prices more deeply. Its third-quarter Market Clock found about two-thirds of the 100 largest metros were already buyer’s markets or moving that way. On our reading, October’s data show buyers getting more negotiating leverage without getting back the purchasing power they need to buy.
