U.S. Existing Home Sales (September 2026)

Existing home sales edge moderately higher in September, but remain a hair below 4.0-million mark

• Existing home sales rose 1.5% month-on-month to 3.99 million units (annualized) in September, above market expectations. However, August was revised lower to roughly 3.93 million units from 3.98 million previously. Activity was down 2.2% from year-ago levels.
• The increase was driven by the single-family segment where sales rose 2.0% to 3.64 million, while sales in the smaller condo/co-op segment fell 2.8% to 350,000 (annualized).
• Activity was mixed across regions, with sales increasing 2.8% in both the South and West, remaining unchanged in the Midwest and falling 2.1% in the Northeast. Compared with a year earlier, sales were lower across all four regions.
• Unadjusted inventory levels stood at 1.60 million, up 1.9% from August and 4.6% from September 2025. Measured at the current sales rate and on a seasonally adjusted basis, unsold inventory stood at 4.6 months’ supply, up moderately from 4.5 months in August and 4.3 months in September of last year. This moves unsold inventory somewhat further into the four-to-six-month range typically considered balanced.  
• The median home price was up 1.3% year-on-year, the same as in the month prior. On a month-to-month seasonally adjusted basis, the median price was flat in September, following a modest pullback in August (seasonal adjustment performed by TD Economics).

Key Implications

• Existing home sales edged higher in September, but the improvement came off a downwardly revised August reading. Despite the uptick, activity remains just below the four-million mark, with August and September representing two of the weakest showings since late 2024. In this vein, the broader housing backdrop remains little changed, with activity still constrained by poor affordability. The inventory backdrop has improved somewhat, with seasonally adjusted supply rising to 4.6 months and moving further into balanced territory. Still, for the time being, supply remains contained enough to support home prices, with price growth remaining positive but firmly in the slow lane.
• The recent surge in mortgage rates will make it difficult for September’s modest sales gain to be sustained. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has risen to 7.5%, from around 6.7% in August and 6% just before the start of the Middle East conflict. For a buyer purchasing the typical single-family home, that 150-basis-point increase raises the monthly mortgage payment by roughly $340, holding everything else constant. This comes at a time when other costs are also on the rise and chipping away at consumers' wallets. The impact is likely to be more visible in transaction activity, with sales likely to soften further from already-subdued levels. Prices should be well-shielded over the near-term due to the still-low inventory balance. But the longer rates remain elevated, the greater the likelihood that weakness spreads from transaction activity to prices.
  
   

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