Home sales under contract have plummeted to a new low in 2026, an analysis has found.
Last month, the number of homes that entered a pending sale - when a seller accepts an offer from a buyer - fell 4 percent month-on-month, the biggest drop in more than three years, housing data platform Redfin announced Monday.
“This is a real-time indicator of what's happening in the housing market; fewer homes went under contract in September largely because mortgage rates rose steadily, surpassing 7% by the end of the month,” the company said.
Pending sales dropped in all 50 states for the first time in three years, too.
Last week mortgage rates climbed to 7.4 percent, reaching their highest level since November 2023, according to federal data.
The number of homes in pending status was lower in April 2020, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, but Redfin excluded those figures from its analysis because it was an outlier.
Homes are also spending 51 days on the market - the amount of time a home is listed before the seller accepts an offer from a buyer.
Looking ahead, mortgage rates may not come down anytime soon. The Federal Reserve raised its interest rate by 0.25 percentage points in September, a move that fuels factors that often lead to higher mortgage rates.
Since that decision, home loan rates rose from 6.95 percent, on September 17, to 7.4 percent last week.
A continued slowdown in pending sales is bad news for sellers but good news for buyers, LendFriend Mortgage President Eric Bernstein told the National Association of Realtors in a September analysis of home-loan rates.
“Higher rates can cool buyer demand and create more negotiating leverage, depending on the local market,” Bernstein said.
“Buyers may have more room to negotiate the purchase price...In markets with limited inventory and strong demand, that leverage may be smaller, but in softer markets it can offset some of the added borrowing costs.”
Consumers looking to improve their chances of getting a lower mortgage rate should get loan quotes from multiple lenders, the National Association of Realtors recommended.
“Studies show that shopping around for a mortgage by gathering quotes from several lenders can make a difference,” the association wrote. “Rates can vary widely among lenders, making it worthwhile to compare multiple loan offers rather than accepting the first one.”
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