New Report: Delistings Trending Below Last Year’s Pace

According to the Realtor.com August 2026 Monthly Housing Trends Report, pending sales declined year over year in August for the first time since last November, but summer delistings, the ultimate sign of a non-functioning market, are 12.6% below last year’s pace, with no notable spike in July or August.

Realtor.com noted that the national median list price was $424,500 in August, down 1% from July and 1.3% from a year earlier.

While it marked the 10th consecutive month of annual list-price declines, the pace of the decline was roughly half of July’s 2.4% drop, Realtor.com noted. At the same time, 20.4% of active listings had a price reduction, up 0.4 percentage points from July and level with price cuts a year ago.

“August’s data shows a housing market entering its seasonal cool-down with less momentum than it had earlier this year,” said Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at Realtor.com. “Higher mortgage rates are meeting a point in the calendar when activity typically slows, and buyers appear to be responding more selectively. The key question is whether this is a typical late-summer pause or the start of more persistent softness.”

Realtor.com noted that listings in pending status declined 0.2% year over year, ending an eight-month streak of annual gains that peaked at 4.1% in May.

Drop in Contract Signings

Meanwhile, contract signings also declined 3.7% compared to a year ago, the second straight drop in signings as higher mortgage rates are beginning to weigh more on housing demand, Realtor.com noted. Homes spent a median of 60 days on the market, three days longer than in July but unchanged from a year ago, the second consecutive month in which homes sold as fast or faster than a year ago.

Realtor.com said that unlike last summer, sellers have not responded to softer conditions by withdrawing listings at historic rates. Delistings were down 12.6% from a year ago in August, following year-over-year declines of 8.3% in June and 4.7% in July.

The share of active inventory that was delisted has held roughly flat at about 5.5% for six weeks, Realtor.com reported.

“Price cuts, pending sales and delistings together can tell you whether sellers are satisfied, panicking, or somewhere in between,” said Jake Krimmel, Senior Economist at Realtor.com. “August brings a mixed reading: buyer demand softened, and price cuts rose modestly above last year’s pace, but sellers are still showing more patience than they did during last year’s late-summer delisting wave. That difference is helping the market avoid a repeat of 2025’s more severe seller pullback, at least for now.”

Realtor.com said that the 20.4% share of active listings with a price reduction was the first reading in 2026 to equal the prior-year rate.

Least, Most Common Areas for Price Cuts

It noted that price cuts were least common in the Northeast (14.1%) and Midwest (19.6%) and most common in the South (21.4%) and West (22.0%). The Northeast and Midwest remained above their respective year-ago price-cut rates by 1.2 and 0.8 percentage points, while the South and West nearly closed their gaps below last year’s pace, Realtor.com reported.

Among the 50 largest metros, price reductions were least common in Hartford, Conn. (10.1%), New York (10.2%) and Buffalo, New York (11.1%). They were most common in Denver (31.4%) and Portland, Oregon. (30.5%) and Salt Lake City (30.3%).

Twenty-seven of the 50 largest metros had a price-cut rate above the prior year, up from a minority in July, Realtor.com reported.

Meanwhile, the national median list price fell 1.2% from a year earlier, while list price per square foot, which adjusts for changes in the size mix of homes for sale, declined 1.8%.

Realtor.com noted that median list prices fell 3% in the Northeast, 2.3% in the South and 2.1% in the West; prices were flat in the Midwest. On a price-per-square-foot basis, the Midwest rose 1.8%, while the Northeast (-0.7%), South (-2.8%) and West (-1.0%) declined.

Median list price per square foot fell in 36 of the 50 largest metros, Realtor.com noted.

Austin, Texas (-8.1%), Tampa, Florida. (-5.6%) and Memphis, Tennessee (-4.1%) posted the largest annual declines, while Providence, Rhode Island (+9.3%), Indianapolis (+4.4%) and Chicago (+3.6%) recorded the largest gains.

Active Listings

Active listings increased 3.6% year over year to 1,140,000, the fastest annual growth rate so far this year, Realtor.com said. The acceleration primarily reflects slower inventory growth in August 2025, when a wave of delistings reduced supply, rather than a sharp change in this year’s market.

Realtor.com noted that national inventory remained 11.1% below typical pre-pandemic levels.

Inventory rose across all four regions, Realtor.com noted.

The Midwest (+10.5%) and Northeast (+9.1%) posted the strongest annual growth, followed by the West (+3.2%) and South (+1.1%). Thirty-six of the 50 largest metros recorded annual inventory gains, led by Minneapolis (+32.9%), Buffalo (+29.8%) and Seattle (+27.3%).

New listings totaled 401,760, down 5.2% from July in a typical late-summer pullback, but also down 0.1% from a year earlier, Realtor.com said. New listings increased in the West (+1.5%), but slipped in the Midwest (-0.5%), Northeast (-0.5%), and South (-0.9%).

Looking ahead, Realtor.com said that as the market moves into fall, its economists will monitor whether the gap in delistings compared with 2025 persists or reverses; whether sellers increasingly rely on price reductions, including repeat cuts; and how regional differences in inventory and price-cut activity evolve, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast.