Homes pile up as buyers bail and sellers refuse to blink

Inventory keeps stacking up while demand drains away. Active listings hit 183,500 homes in October, up 7.4% from a year earlier — the fastest annual growth in eight months, according to Realtor.com. Listings have now climbed every month since February, even as new listings slid 7.5% compared with October 2025.

National supply is now just 6.6% below typical pre-pandemic levels, the tightest that gap has been since the pandemic began. Years of lean inventory followed the buying frenzy of 2020 and 2021, when mortgage rates notched more than a dozen record lows.

Sellers are holding the line. Just over 20% cut their asking price in October, roughly matching September and last October, and delistings didn't meaningfully rise. "Buyers are stepping back as higher mortgage rates cut into their buying power, while sellers are listing less often without a broad increase in delistings or price cuts," said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.

Signed contracts tell the same story. Newly pending sales fell 16.8% year-over-year in October, per Zillow — the steepest annual drop since August 2023 and the slowest October since 2018. Mortgage rates dipped slightly month-to-month but remain more than a full percentage point above where they sat a year ago.

Prices, meanwhile, kept climbing. Zillow pegged the monthly payment on a typical U.S. home at $2,004 in October, assuming 20% down and excluding taxes and insurance — up 12.8% from last year and 4.8% from September, the biggest one-month jump in four years.

Zillow chief economist Mischa Fisher expects November to contract even more, calling it likely "the worst of it." He said the slowdown's pace should ease into the new year, with deals available for buyers willing to brave affordability headwinds and plenty of upside for sales if rates come down.