Existing-home sales slid 2% in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.98 million, the first time this year the pace has dropped below the 4 million mark, according to the National Association of Realtors’ own existing-home sales report. That’s 1.2% fewer closings than the same month last year, even as the median home price kept climbing. If you’ve been sitting out this market waiting for a break, or waiting for a buyer before you list, this report is the clearest sign yet of who actually has room to negotiate heading into fall.
The August Numbers, Plainly
NAR’s own data puts the median existing-home price at $429,100 in August, up 1.6% from a year earlier and marking the 38th straight month of annual price increases. Homes sat on the market a median of 31 days, up from 29 in July. First-time buyers accounted for 30% of purchases and all-cash buyers made up 27%, both slightly higher shares than the month before.
Inventory is where the real shift shows up. Total housing supply rose 3.2% from July to 1.62 million units, the highest level since November 2019, according to HousingWire’s own reporting on the release. That works out to 4.9 months of supply at the current sales pace, the highest reading in more than a decade.
Why So Few People Actually Closed
The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 6.67% in August, and NAR’s Housing Affordability Index came in at 104.7, an improvement from 101.2 a year ago but still nowhere near the affordability buyers had before rates climbed. NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun pointed to wage growth as the offsetting factor, noting that existing-home sales are still up 1.6% year-to-date through August thanks partly to 643,000 net jobs added since the start of the year, per HousingWire’s coverage of his comments. Wages are rising faster than the pace of home-price growth in some markets, but the monthly mortgage payment math still keeps plenty of would-be buyers on the sidelines.
You can see the strain in the price-cut numbers, too. More than 42% of listed properties saw a price reduction in August, well above the 30% to 35% range considered typical, based on the same HousingWire data. Sellers priced for a spring market that didn’t fully materialize are now adjusting.
What Rising Inventory Means If You’re Selling This Fall
A 4.9-month supply still falls short of the six-month mark that traditionally signals a buyer’s market, but it’s the tightest gap in years. Regionally, sales fell 4% in the Northeast, 3.1% in the Midwest and 1.6% in the South, while the West held roughly flat, according to HousingWire’s breakdown of the NAR release. If your home is sitting past that 31-day median, it’s competing against a deeper pool of alternatives than it was a year ago, which is part of why price cuts have become so common.
Coldwell Banker CEO Kamini Lane framed the season as an opening rather than a setback, noting that fall typically brings less competition among buyers, so those who kept waiting through the summer might find this a workable window, per HousingWire’s report. That take assumes you can still qualify at today’s rates, which remains the real constraint for a lot of households.
Should You Actually Wait?
Distressed sales, the foreclosures and short sales that used to flood the market during downturns, made up just 2% of August transactions, according to NAR’s own report. That number matters because it rules out the idea that this slowdown is being driven by forced sellers dumping homes at a discount. It’s a demand problem, not a distress problem, which is a very different market to time. Prices are still rising precisely because the sellers who remain don’t have to sell, even with fewer buyers showing up.
That’s a hard combination for anyone hoping for a real price correction. Sales volume can keep falling while prices keep climbing, because the two aren’t reacting to the same pressure. A buyer waiting for prices to drop meaningfully may be waiting on a mechanism that isn’t currently in motion, even as the number of competing offers on any given listing continues to thin out.
Heading Into a Slower, Pricier Fall
None of this points to a crash or a sudden thaw. It points to a market where fewer transactions are happening at higher prices, buyers have marginally more leverage than they did a year ago, and sellers who need to move are the ones absorbing the difference through price cuts and longer listings. Whether that counts as good news depends entirely on which side of the closing table you’re sitting on this fall.