Price cuts hit 20.8% of US listings, a four-year high, but the rate jump since last fall would need a 9% cut to offset

One in five homes for sale in the US had its price cut in September. Realtor.com's monthly housing report put the share at 20.8%, up 0.9 point from a year earlier and the highest for any month since October 2022. Active listings rose 5.5% from a year ago to more than 1.16 million, leaving inventory 9.1% below pre-pandemic norms, the smallest gap the site has recorded. The stock of homes under contract fell 4.1%.

Realtor.com's economists tie it to mortgage rates, which they say rose nearly 40 basis points in the month and crossed 7% for the first time since January 2025. Realtor.com News framed it as buyers gaining the upper hand.

The thing the "buyer's market" headline leaves out

More listings and more price cuts do give buyers leverage. They do not, so far, give them a cheaper house. Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 7.28% on October 1, against 6.34% a year earlier. Here is what that does to the monthly principal and interest on the same loan:

To keep the payment at last year's $2,486 at today's rate, the loan would have to be about $363,400, roughly 9.2% smaller. Realtor.com's national measure of prices per square foot is down 1.7% from a year ago. The cuts are real, but they are recovering a small fraction of what the rate move took away. Someone closing in November is paying more per month for the same house than a buyer did last fall, even after negotiating.

That is why pending sales are falling while inventory grows. Realtor.com called the combination of falling pending sales and rising inventory a sign of stagnation worth watching. Delistings, about 5.6% of listings, were in line with last year, so sellers are not yet pulling homes in large numbers.

The West, not the Midwest, is where it is breaking

A month ago Realtor.com said it was watching the Midwest. Instead, the West posted the biggest year-over-year jump in price cuts of any region, up 1.8 points to 22.8% of listings. The metros with the most cuts were Salt Lake City (33.3% of listings), Denver (31.5%) and Portland (31.3%). Salt Lake City's share rose 6.9 points from a year ago, San Jose's 4.6 and Seattle's 4.4.

Inventory grew in 43 of the 50 largest metros, up from 37 in August, led by Minneapolis (+31.2%), Seattle (+28.5%) and Buffalo (+28.0%). In Seattle, new listings were down 7.4% from a year ago, so the extra supply is homes not selling rather than a wave of new sellers.

The tightest markets are the opposite story. Inventory fell 13.7% in Jacksonville, 12.3% in Miami and 10.9% in San Francisco, and cuts were rarest in New York (9.9% of listings), Hartford and Buffalo.

Who it actually hits

Sellers in Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland and Seattle are in the market where list price matters least: a third of their competition is already discounting. For a buyer, the leverage is mostly in terms, inspection time and seller-paid closing costs, since a price cut alone does not close a $251-a-month gap. For the trades that live on home sales, such as title offices, inspectors and movers, fewer contracts mean fewer closings in November and December; we worked through that in what 7.28% mortgage rates mean for a title office and a home inspector.

Mortgage rates follow the 10-year Treasury, not the Fed directly; the 10-year chart is the one to watch for whether October brings any relief.

Sources: Realtor.com September 2026 housing report; Realtor.com News; Freddie Mac PMMS. Payment figures are our arithmetic and exclude taxes and insurance. This is market information, not investment advice.