Pending Home Sales Post Biggest Monthly Drop in More Than Three Years, Redfin Says

03:46 PM EDT, 10/12/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Pending home sales in the US declined the most in more than three years last month as mortgage rates jumped above 7%, Redfin said Monday. Pending home sales fell 4% sequentially to 316,652 on a seasonally adjusted basis in September, according to the real estate brokerage. The number of homes that went under contract in September marked the lowest reading since April 2014, excluding April 2020, when the the COVID-19 pandemic brought the housing market to a halt, the report showed. The weekly average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage climbed to a nearly three-year high of 7.28% as of Oct. 1. "It's not surprising that when rates climb above 7%, fewer people buy homes because fewer people can afford them," Redfin Head of Economic Research Chen Zhao said. "For buyers, less competition means more room to negotiate: on price, on closing costs, on repairs, and sometimes sellers even pay for a mortgage-rate buydown. The median US home-sale price rose 1.3% year over year, the smallest increase since February, according to the report. "Slow sales also mean prices may flatten or fall in the not-so-distant future," Zhao said. The pace of US home price growth decelerated sequentially in the quarter through August as buyers gained more bargaining power than before, Redfin said in September. The total number of for-sale homes rose to its highest level since March 2020, with sellers steadily adding homes to the market and buyers pulling back, Redfin said Monday. New listings ticked up 0.3% sequentially in September, but were down 0.4% annually. Late last month, government data showed that new home sales reached the highest level since December in August, led by an 85% surge in the Midwest.