Buyers retreat across all 50 major metros as near-record monthly payments continue to stall the US housing market
United States pending home sales fell to their lowest level in records dating back to 2021 in the four weeks ending October 18.
Weekly average mortgage rates holding at 7.4% continued to sideline buyers across all 50 of the country’s largest metro areas for the second straight week, according to Redfin, the real estate brokerage powered by Rocket.
Seasonally adjusted pending sales stood at 281,749, a 1.9% week-over-week decline and a 14.4% contraction year over year.
The result extends a housing slowdown that deepened through the summer of 2026, when pending sales had already fallen to a three-month low at rates of 6.55%, a figure that now looks modest against today’s mid-7% reality.
A market stalled across every major city
Seattle led all tracked metros with a 28.8% year-over-year drop in pending sales, followed by San Diego (-25.4%) and Atlanta (-23.8%).
The median monthly housing payment reached $2,796, the second-highest level on record and a 10.4% jump year over year. The median home-sale price rose just 0.2% to $390,614, a sign that sellers are losing their pricing advantage.
New listings fell 1.4% week over week to their lowest point since July as homeowners took note of softening demand.
Total active inventory edged up just 0.1% to approximately 1.51 million homes because buyers are not absorbing supply quickly enough to reduce it. The share of listings with price reductions climbed to 21.7%, up from 21% a year earlier.
Mortgage applications fell last week despite lower rates. Joel Kan of the Mortgage Bankers Association says affordability pressures continue to limit buyer activity. https://t.co/89rtC1fU8r
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) October 21, 2026
What this means for brokers
At 7.4%, mortgage rates are not only discouraging potential buyers, they are narrowing the pool of qualified ones.
Nicholas Barta, division president at Security First Financial in the US, captured the challenge in a May interview with Mortgage Professional America, saying, “There’s not as many people that will qualify to purchase homes, or they can’t qualify to purchase the homes that they want because they qualify at a lower level.”
Earlier this year, Melissa Cohn, regional vice president at William Raveis Mortgage in New York, told MPA that rate direction would ultimately determine market trajectory: “But obviously, where interest rates go will have a lot to do with where the real estate market goes.”
She added: “I think if rates remain stable, then hopefully we’ll see some improvement because a lot of people put off making a move last year.”
That improvement has not materialized. On the supply side, the rate lock-in effect holding firm among pandemic-era mortgage holders continues to constrain resale inventory, keeping potential move-up sellers on the sidelines.
According to Redfin, there are now hundreds of thousands more sellers than buyers nationally, giving active buyers the strongest negotiating leverage in more than a decade, months of supply reached 4.4 in October, up from 4.0 a year earlier.
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