US Existing Home Sales Fall to Lowest Level in More Than 16 Years as Mortgage Rates Keep Buyers on the Sidelines

Sales of previously owned homes in the United States fell in October 2026 to their lowest level in more than sixteen years, as high mortgage rates and still-elevated house prices pushed would-be buyers to the sidelines. The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday, November 12, that existing-home sales dropped 5.5 percent from September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million units. That was the weakest reading since August 2010, when sales were still falling after the end of a tax credit for homebuyers, and it was 8.8 percent below the level of a year earlier. The figures describe a housing market that is frozen rather than collapsing: prices have not fallen, distressed sales remain rare, and homes are still changing hands — just far fewer of them than at any point since the aftermath of the financial crisis. This is the story of the US existing home sales October 2026 lowest since 2010, what drove the drop, why prices held firm, and what buyers, sellers and policymakers are watching next.

1. The October Numbers in Full

The headline number is stark, and it is worth stating plainly before any interpretation begins. In October, existing homes in the United States sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million. A seasonally adjusted annual rate is not a count of the homes sold in that month. It is an estimate of how many would sell in a full year if October’s pace continued for twelve months, after adjusting for the normal seasonal pattern of the housing market. The measure allows one month to be compared fairly with another, and on that measure October was the slowest month for the American housing market in more than a decade and a half.

The National Association of Realtors, the industry body that compiles the monthly figures, released the data on Thursday, November 12. The report covers sales of single-family homes, townhouses, condominiums and co-operatives that have been owned before — the existing-home market, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of American housing transactions. Newly built homes are counted separately, and they are not part of this report. When the association says sales fell, it means that fewer existing homes changed hands, at a slower pace, than in the month before and the year before.

1.1 Sales Fall 5.5% in a Single Month

The month-on-month fall of 5.5 percent is large for a single month in a market that usually moves in smaller steps. September’s pace was revised down in the same release, to 3.97 million from 3.99 million, which means the starting point for October was already a little lower than first reported. From that revised September figure, sales dropped by more than one in twenty in a single month. In a market where monthly changes of one or two percent are common, a fall of this size stands out, and it is the main reason the October report drew so much attention.

The year-on-year comparison is sharper still. Sales in October were 8.8 percent below the level of October 2025. That is close to a tenth of the market disappearing in twelve months. The comparison matters because it strips out the seasonal pattern: October is compared with October, not with a summer month when sales are normally higher. A fall of 8.8 percent on that basis is not a seasonal quirk. It is a measure of how much smaller the market has become over the course of a year in which borrowing costs stayed high and prices stayed high with them.

It is also worth noting what the numbers do not show. They do not show a market in which homes are being sold at a loss, or in which forced sales are flooding the market. Distressed sales — foreclosures and short sales, in which a home is sold for less than the mortgage owed on it — accounted for just 2 percent of transactions in October. That is a small share by any historical standard, and it is one of the clearest signs that the October weakness is a freeze in demand, not a wave of distress. Owners who do not have to sell are, in large part, choosing not to.

1.2 A 16-Year Low, Not a One-Month Blip

The comparison with August 2010 is the one that gives the October figure its weight. The last time existing-home sales ran at this pace, the United States was still working through the aftermath of the financial crisis, and sales were declining after the expiry of a federal tax credit that had pulled purchases forward. Sixteen years later, the market has returned to that pace for very different reasons. There is no financial crisis, no wave of foreclosures, and no credit crunch in the banking system. There is, instead, a long period of expensive borrowing that has gradually thinned the ranks of people able and willing to buy.

The length of the comparison should not be mistaken for a claim that the two moments are the same. In 2010, sales were low because the market was still damaged. In 2026, sales are low because the cost of buying has stayed high for so long that many households have simply stopped trying, at least for now. The distinction matters for what happens next. A damaged market needs repair. A frozen market needs a change in the arithmetic — lower rates, lower prices, or higher incomes — before buyers return in large numbers.

The October figure also sits at the end of a longer run of weakness rather than arriving out of nowhere. Sales have been subdued for much of the past two years, held down by the same combination of high rates and high prices. What October did was to push the pace to a new low for this cycle, below the levels seen in earlier weak months. That is why the report was described in the financial press as the lowest in more than sixteen years rather than simply a bad month. It marks a new floor for a market that has been searching for one.

2. Mortgage Rates Did the Damage

If one factor explains the October sales figures, it is the cost of borrowing. The price of a home is only part of what a buyer pays. The monthly mortgage payment, which depends on the interest rate, is the part that decides whether a household can afford to buy at all. In October, that monthly cost was at its most punishing level in a generation, and the sales figures show the result.

The National Association of Realtors’ chief economist, Lawrence Yun, put the connection plainly in the association’s release. He said that home buying is difficult when mortgage rates have climbed to their highest levels since 2000, aside from a single month in 2023, and that as a result home sales fell to their lowest level since August 2010. The statement is a straightforward piece of cause and effect: rates at their highest in a quarter of a century, sales at their lowest in more than sixteen years. The two facts belong together, and the association presented them together for that reason.

2.1 A 7.33% Average Rate in October

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage was 7.33 percent across October, according to the data cited with the sales release. The 30-year fixed mortgage is the standard home loan in the United States, and its rate is the number that most buyers watch. At 7.33 percent, it was the highest level since 2000 outside of a single month in 2023, when rates briefly touched a similar level. For a buyer borrowing several hundred thousand dollars, the difference between a rate in the region of 7 percent and one in the region of 3 percent — the level that prevailed only a few years ago — is hundreds of dollars a month, every month, for decades.

That monthly difference is what has frozen the market. A household that could comfortably afford a home at a lower rate may find the same home unaffordable at 7.33 percent, not because the price has risen but because the cost of borrowing has. The effect is sharpest for first-time buyers, who have no existing home to sell and no equity to carry into the purchase, but it reaches every buyer who needs a mortgage. Cash buyers, who need no loan at all, are largely unaffected, which is one reason the market has tilted towards investors and wealthier purchasers.

There was a small sign of relief in the same week as the sales release. Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance agency, reported in its weekly survey that the average 30-year fixed rate had fallen to 7.11 percent. The survey was released on the same morning as the sales figures, and it showed rates easing from their October peak. The fall is modest, and 7.11 percent is still far above the levels of a few years ago, but it points in the direction buyers have been waiting for. Whether it continues is one of the open questions that the next sales report will begin to answer.

2.2 Why Closings Lag the Rates That Shaped Them

Existing-home sales are counted at the closing of a contract, the moment when ownership changes hands and the money is paid. That timing matters for reading the October figures correctly. A sale that closed in October was usually agreed weeks earlier, when the buyer and seller signed a contract. The contracts behind October’s closings were mostly signed in August and September, the two months when mortgage rates were at their worst. October’s sales, in other words, reflect the borrowing costs of late summer, not the slightly lower rates reported in the middle of November.

The lag cuts both ways. If rates continue to fall, the improvement will not show up in the sales figures immediately. It will appear first in new contracts, and only later, when those contracts close, in the sales data. The same lag means that a single month of lower rates cannot be read as a recovery. It takes several months of easier borrowing before the sales figures can be expected to respond in a sustained way. Anyone watching for a turning point in the housing market should therefore watch the rate data first and the sales data second, and should expect a delay between the two.

The lag also explains why the October report, bad as it is, is a backward-looking document. It describes the market as it was in August and September, when rates were peaking, rather than the market as it is today. That does not make the figures less important — they are the best available measure of how many homes actually changed hands — but it does mean they should not be treated as a verdict on the present moment. The present moment, with rates a little lower, may already be slightly better. The sales figures will take time to show it, if it lasts.

3. Prices Refuse to Fall With Sales

The most surprising feature of the October report is not that sales fell, but that prices did not fall with them. In most markets, a sharp drop in demand pushes prices down. In the American housing market in October, demand fell sharply and prices rose — slightly, but they rose. The median existing-home sales price was $416,700 in October, up 0.4 percent from a year earlier. That is a small increase, close to flat, but it is an increase all the same, and it is the reason the market feels frozen rather than corrected.

The combination of falling sales and steady prices is the defining puzzle of this housing cycle. Buyers cannot afford to buy at current prices and current rates, yet sellers are not cutting prices to meet them. The result is a standoff: fewer transactions, at prices that barely move. Understanding why prices have held firm is essential to understanding why the market has not recovered, and why it may not recover quickly even if rates fall a little.

3.1 The Median Price Holds at $416,700

The median price is the price of the home in the middle of the market — half of the homes sold cost more, half cost less. At $416,700, the October median was 0.4 percent higher than in October 2025. The increase is small enough to be described as essentially flat, but the direction matters. After a year in which sales fell by nearly a tenth, the typical home still cost more than it did a year ago. For a buyer, that means there has been no relief on the price side to offset the pain on the rate side. Both parts of the affordability equation have moved against the buyer at the same time.

The median price has held up because the supply of homes for sale, while rising, is still limited relative to demand at lower prices. Owners who bought when rates were low have little reason to sell into a market where they would have to borrow at a much higher rate to buy their next home. This is the so-called lock-in effect: a homeowner with a mortgage at 3 percent who sells and buys again at 7 percent faces a far larger monthly payment for a similar home, and many simply choose to stay put. Their decision keeps homes off the market, and the scarcity of homes for sale supports prices even as the number of buyers falls.

The effect is reinforced by the fact that most homeowners are not in financial distress. With distressed sales at just 2 percent of transactions, there is no forced selling to push prices down. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, forced sales were common, and they dragged prices lower. Today, homeowners generally have equity in their homes and the income to keep paying their mortgages. They can afford to wait, and waiting is what most of them are doing.

3.2 Forty Months of Annual Gains

The October increase, small as it was, extended a remarkable run. The median price has now risen on a year-on-year basis for forty consecutive months. That is more than three years in which the typical American home has cost more than it did in the same month a year earlier, without a single month of decline. The run covers the whole period in which rates have been high and sales have been weak, and it is the clearest evidence that the housing market’s problem is not falling prices but frozen volumes.

A run of forty months of annual gains does not mean prices have risen fast. The October increase of 0.4 percent is modest, and recent monthly gains have been far smaller than the double-digit increases seen in the early years of the decade. The market has cooled from rapid price growth to near-flat prices, but it has not crossed into decline. For buyers hoping that a fall in sales would eventually force prices down, the October figures offer little comfort. Prices have slowed, but they have not fallen.

Whether prices can stay flat while sales fall further is an open question. If rates stay high and sales stay low for much longer, more sellers may eventually accept lower prices, particularly those who need to move for work or family reasons. But the October data show no sign of that happening yet. The market’s adjustment, so far, has come almost entirely through fewer sales rather than lower prices, and that pattern has now held for more than three years.

4. Supply Builds, Slowly

While sales fell, the number of homes available to buy rose. Total housing inventory stood at 1.59 million units at the end of October, an increase of 1.3 percent from September. More homes on the market is normally good news for buyers: it gives them more choice and, in time, should put downward pressure on prices. But the increase in October was modest, and the level of supply remains low by historical standards. The market is loosening, but it is loosening slowly.

The rise in inventory is itself a sign of the freeze. Homes are staying on the market for longer because fewer buyers are able to complete a purchase, so the stock of unsold homes grows even though few new sellers are entering the market. That is a different kind of supply increase from the one that comes when many owners decide to sell at once. It reflects homes that have not sold, rather than a flood of new listings, and it is a symptom of weak demand rather than a sign of a healthy, active market.

4.1 Inventory Reaches 1.59 Million Homes

The figure of 1.59 million homes for sale at the end of October is higher than a year ago, and higher than in the depths of the recent shortage, when inventory fell to levels not seen in decades. But it is still far below the levels that prevailed before the pandemic, when two million or more homes were typically available. The American housing market has been short of homes for years, a shortage built up over a decade in which too few homes were constructed after the financial crisis. That underlying shortage is one of the main reasons prices have held up despite weak sales.

The monthly increase of 1.3 percent is small in itself, but it is part of a gradual trend. Inventory has been edging higher for many months as homes take longer to sell. Each month, a few more homes remain unsold than are added by new sellers, and the total creeps upward. The process is slow, and at this pace it would take a long time for supply to return to the levels that would give buyers real bargaining power. But the direction is consistent: the market is, month by month, becoming a little less tight than it was.

For a buyer, more inventory means more homes to choose from and a little more time to decide. For a seller, it means more competition from other sellers and a greater risk that a home priced too high will sit unsold. Both effects are modest at current levels, but they point in the same direction. If inventory continues to rise while sales stay weak, the balance of the market will gradually shift towards buyers, even if prices have not yet followed.

4.2 A 5.1-Month Supply Changes the Balance

Inventory is often expressed not as a count of homes but as a supply measured in months: how long the current stock would last if homes continued to sell at the current pace and no new homes were listed. On that measure, October’s inventory represented a 5.1-month supply. The figure is important because it gives a sense of the balance between buyers and sellers. A supply of around six months is generally regarded as a balanced market, in which neither side has a clear advantage. Below that, sellers hold the advantage. Above it, buyers do.

At 5.1 months, the market is closer to balance than it has been for years, but it has not yet reached it. Sellers still have a slight edge, which helps to explain why prices have not fallen. A market with five months of supply is not a buyer’s market, and sellers can still afford to hold their prices and wait for a buyer who can pay them. If sales fall further, however, the months’ supply will rise even without any new listings, because the same stock of homes will last longer at a slower sales pace. That is the arithmetic that could eventually tip the balance.

The months’ supply figure also shows how sensitive the market has become to the sales pace. Because sales are now so low, a small further fall in sales would push the supply measure up noticeably. Conversely, a modest recovery in sales would bring it down. The figure is therefore worth watching in the months ahead, not as a prediction of prices but as a gauge of how tight or loose the market is becoming. In October, the gauge pointed to a market that is loosening, slowly, but still short of balance.

5. Who Is Still Buying — and Who Is Not

A market in which total sales fall by nearly a tenth in a year does not fall evenly. Some buyers disappear almost entirely, while others keep buying much as before. The October report gives a partial picture of who is still in the market and who has been priced out, and the picture is one of a market that has become more dependent on buyers who do not need a mortgage, or who need only a small one.

The shift matters because it changes who the housing market serves. A market dominated by cash buyers and investors is a different market from one in which ordinary families, borrowing to buy their first home, set the pace. The October figures suggest the American market has moved some distance towards the first of those descriptions, and that the families who would normally be its foundation are the ones most likely to be waiting on the sidelines.

5.1 Investors Take One Sale in Five

Investors accounted for 20 percent of existing-home sales in October, or one purchase in every five. That is a high share, and it reflects the fact that investors are far less affected by mortgage rates than ordinary buyers. Many buy with cash, or with borrowing on terms that differ from a household mortgage, and they are buying homes as assets to rent out or to hold, not as places to live. When rates are high, their share of the market tends to rise, because they are the buyers who can still transact.

A market in which one sale in five goes to an investor is a market in which a substantial part of the housing stock is being bought by people who will not live in it. That has consequences beyond the sales figures. Homes bought by investors are homes that are not available to owner-occupiers, and in a market where supply is already tight, the competition from investors makes the shortage worse for families trying to buy a home to live in. It also means that the sales figures overstate the health of the market for ordinary buyers: total sales include a large block of purchases that have nothing to do with a family moving home.

The investor share is not in itself a sign of wrongdoing. Investors have always been part of the housing market, and in some places they provide rental homes that are needed. But a share of one in five, at a time when total sales are at a sixteen-year low, is a sign of how far the market has tilted away from its usual buyers. When ordinary buyers return, the investor share should fall. Until then, it is a reminder of who can still afford to buy when borrowing is this expensive.

5.2 First-Time Buyers Face the Hardest Math

First-time buyers face the hardest arithmetic in this market, and the October figures show why. A first-time buyer has no home to sell, so there is no equity from a previous purchase to put towards the next one. The entire purchase must be funded from savings and a mortgage, and the mortgage must be large enough to cover most of the price. At a rate of 7.33 percent, the monthly payment on that mortgage is far higher than it would have been only a few years ago, and for many households it exceeds what their income can support.

The difficulty is compounded by the price level. At a median price of $416,700, even a modest deposit represents a large sum of money to save, and the monthly payment on the remaining loan is the binding constraint for most buyers. A household that could have afforded the median home at a lower rate may find the same home out of reach at today’s rate, even though the price has barely moved. The market has not become cheaper in any sense that matters to such a buyer. It has become more expensive, because the cost of borrowing has risen while the price has stayed put.

There is no single figure in the October release that captures the first-time buyer share, and this post does not invent one. What the release does show, through the combination of high rates, flat prices and a high investor share, is a market in which the buyers who need the most help from the mortgage system are the ones least able to get it. Until rates fall meaningfully or prices adjust, that is likely to remain the case, and the market’s recovery, when it comes, will probably begin with the buyers who have been waiting longest.

6. The Regions Tell Different Stories

The national figures hide wide differences between regions, and the October report is no exception. The United States is not a single housing market but a collection of regional markets, each with its own prices, incomes and supply conditions. A national fall of 5.5 percent can conceal a steep fall in one region and a much smaller one in another, and the October data follow that pattern. Sales fell in three of the country’s regions, and the decline was steepest in the West, where prices are highest and the effect of high rates is felt most keenly.

Regional differences matter because they show where the affordability problem is worst. In the West, where the median home costs far more than the national figure, a rate of 7.33 percent adds a particularly large amount to the monthly payment. A buyer in a high-price region needs a larger loan, and the interest on that larger loan is larger in absolute terms. It is therefore no surprise that the West, the most expensive region, saw the sharpest fall in sales. The market is weakest where homes cost the most, which is exactly what the arithmetic of mortgage rates would predict.

6.1 The West Falls Hardest

The West’s sharp fall in October is the clearest regional signal in the report. Western states include some of the most expensive housing markets in the country, and they are also among the places where prices rose fastest in the early years of the decade. When rates rose, the combination of high prices and high borrowing costs hit those markets first and hardest. Buyers in the West need larger mortgages than buyers elsewhere, and the monthly cost of those mortgages has risen by more than anywhere else in the country.

The regional pattern also reflects the lock-in effect at its strongest. Homeowners in the West who bought before rates rose hold some of the largest gains in housing wealth in the country, and they have the least reason to give up a low-rate mortgage to buy again at a much higher one. Their reluctance to sell keeps supply tight in the very region where demand has fallen most, which helps to explain why prices in the West have not fallen in line with sales. The standoff between buyers who cannot afford to buy and sellers who cannot afford to sell is sharpest where prices are highest.

This post does not give regional sales figures beyond the direction reported, because the detailed regional breakdown was not part of the verified figures used here. What can be said, on the basis of the report, is that the West fell hardest and that sales fell in three regions overall. That is enough to establish the pattern: the national decline was broad, but it was led by the most expensive part of the country, where the affordability squeeze is tightest.

6.2 Three Regions Down as the Market Splits

That sales fell in three regions, rather than in all of them, is a small but meaningful detail. It means the weakness was widespread but not universal, and that at least one part of the country held up better than the rest. The regions that fell did so for the same reasons as the nation as a whole — high rates, high prices and the lock-in effect — but the region that held up suggests that local conditions still matter. Cheaper markets, where the monthly payment is lower even at a high rate, are more resilient than expensive ones.

The split between regions is also a reminder that a national recovery, when it comes, is unlikely to arrive everywhere at once. Cheaper regions, where homes are more affordable even at current rates, may recover first, as buyers who have been priced out of expensive markets look for homes they can afford elsewhere. More expensive regions may take longer, waiting for a larger fall in rates or a genuine adjustment in prices. The October figures do not show that recovery beginning, but they do show the conditions under which it might begin: in the places where the arithmetic is least punishing.

For anyone following the housing market, the regional pattern is therefore worth more attention than the national total alone. The national total tells you that the market is frozen. The regional pattern tells you where it is frozen hardest, and where the first thaw might appear. In October, the freeze was hardest in the West, and the thaw, if it comes, is most likely to begin where homes cost least.

7. What the Miss Against Forecasts Means

The October sales figure was not only low in absolute terms. It was also lower than economists had expected, and the size of the miss is part of the story. Before the release, economists polled by Reuters had forecast that existing-home sales would fall to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.85 million units. The actual figure was 3.75 million, a hundred thousand below the forecast. In a market of this size, a miss of that magnitude is not a rounding error. It is a sign that the market is weaker than the people who watch it most closely had assumed.

Forecasts matter because they shape expectations. When a widely watched figure comes in below forecast, it forces a reassessment of the market’s direction. Lenders, builders, estate agents and policymakers all use the sales figures to judge the state of the housing market, and a downside surprise tells them that the weakness is deeper than they had thought. The October miss does not change the underlying facts — the rates, the prices and the sales are what they are — but it changes how those facts are read.

7.1 Economists Expected 3.85 Million

The Reuters poll forecast of 3.85 million was itself a weak number. It implied a fall from September’s revised pace of 3.97 million, and it would have been one of the lowest readings in years. Economists were, in other words, already expecting a bad month. They expected sales to fall, and they expected the fall to be substantial. What they did not expect was a fall quite as large as the one that arrived.

The gap between the forecast and the outcome, 3.85 million against 3.75 million, is a measure of how quickly the market deteriorated in the late summer. The contracts that closed in October were signed in August and September, when rates were at their peak, and the sales that resulted were weaker than forecasters had allowed for. It is possible that forecasters underestimated the effect of the highest rates of the cycle, or that they expected a few more buyers to proceed despite the cost. Either way, the market proved weaker than the consensus, and the consensus will now have to be revised down.

The forecast miss also matters for the next release. Economists who were caught out in October will be more cautious in November, and the forecast for the next month is likely to be lower than it would otherwise have been. That does not make a further fall more likely, but it does mean that the market’s weakness is now more fully reflected in expectations. The next report will be judged against a lower bar, and a figure that would have disappointed a month ago may now be read as a sign of stabilisation.

7.2 What a Miss This Size Signals

A forecast miss of this size signals that the housing market’s adjustment is still under way, and that its depth is not yet fully understood. When a market is stable, forecasts tend to be close to the outcome, because the forces at work are familiar and their effects are predictable. When a market is adjusting to a large shock — in this case, a prolonged period of expensive borrowing — forecasts become harder, because the relationship between rates and sales is not fixed. Buyers may hold out longer than expected, or they may return sooner. In October, they held out longer.

The miss also signals that the usual indicators are not yet giving a clear read on the market’s direction. The fall in the Freddie Mac rate to 7.11 percent in the week of the release is a positive sign, but it is a single week’s reading, and it follows months in which rates were higher. The rise in inventory to a 5.1-month supply is another positive sign, but it is driven in part by homes failing to sell rather than by a healthy increase in listings. Neither indicator, on its own, is enough to call a turning point, and the forecast miss is a reminder that the market can still surprise on the downside.

For policymakers, the miss is a caution against reading too much into any single month. The housing market is one of the parts of the economy most sensitive to interest rates, and its weakness is a sign that high rates are biting. But a single month’s sales, even one as weak as October’s, does not by itself determine the course of the wider economy. What matters is whether the weakness persists, and whether it spreads to other parts of the economy. Those questions will take more than one report to answer.

8. What Comes Next for Buyers, Sellers and Rates

October’s report leaves the American housing market in a familiar position: sales at a sixteen-year low, prices near flat, supply rising slowly, and buyers waiting for a change in the arithmetic. The question now is what changes first, and how much change is needed before sales begin to recover. The answers are not yet known, and this post does not pretend otherwise. What can be said is what to watch, and what would count as a genuine turning point rather than a single month’s noise.

The most important thing to watch is the mortgage rate. The fall to 7.11 percent reported by Freddie Mac in the week of the sales release is a step in the right direction, but it is a small step from a very high level. A sustained fall in rates — over weeks and months, not a single week — would be needed before buyers could plan with confidence. A fall of a full percentage point or more would change the monthly payment on a typical mortgage by a meaningful amount, and it is that kind of change, rather than a tenth of a point here or there, that would be expected to bring buyers back in large numbers.

8.1 The November Test

The next existing-home sales report, covering November, will be the first real test of whether the market has found a floor. Because sales are counted at closing, the November figures will reflect contracts signed in September and October, a period in which rates were still high but beginning to ease from their peak. If November’s sales hold steady or rise slightly, it will suggest that the worst of the decline is over, at least for now. If they fall further, to a new low for the cycle, it will suggest that the market has not yet bottomed out.

The November test is complicated by the seasonal pattern. Sales normally fall in the winter months, as fewer people move in cold weather and around the holidays. The seasonally adjusted figures are designed to account for that pattern, but the adjustment is imperfect, and winter months are harder to read than summer ones. A small fall in the adjusted November figure may therefore mean less than it appears to, and a small rise may mean more. The test should be read with that caution in mind, and no single month should be treated as a verdict.

What is not in doubt is that the November report will be watched closely, by buyers deciding whether to wait or to act, by sellers deciding whether to list or to hold, and by policymakers judging the effect of interest rates on the wider economy. October’s report set a low bar. November’s will show whether the market can clear it, or whether the freeze is deepening. Until that report arrives, the October figures are the best available picture of the market, and they describe a market that is still frozen.

8.2 The Bottom Line

The bottom line of the October report is simple, and it is worth stating without embellishment. Existing-home sales in the United States fell 5.5 percent in October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million, the lowest since August 2010 and 8.8 percent below a year earlier, after economists had forecast 3.85 million. The median price was $416,700, up 0.4 percent on the year, extending forty consecutive months of annual gains. Inventory rose 1.3 percent to 1.59 million homes, a 5.1-month supply. Investors took 20 percent of sales, distressed sales were just 2 percent, and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 7.33 percent in October, the highest since 2000 aside from a single month in 2023, before easing to 7.11 percent in Freddie Mac’s weekly survey.

Those facts, taken together, describe a market that is frozen by the cost of borrowing, not broken by distress. Buyers cannot afford to buy at current rates and prices, sellers cannot afford to sell and buy again at a higher rate, and the result is fewer transactions at prices that barely move. The freeze will end when the arithmetic changes — when rates fall enough, prices adjust enough, or incomes rise enough for buyers to return. None of those changes has happened yet in a meaningful way, and until one of them does, the market is likely to stay close to where October left it: slow, expensive, and waiting. The coming days will provide the answers.

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