What a 7.3% drop in pending home sales actually means for an agent, a mover and an HVAC contractor

The National Association of Realtors said pending home sales, a count of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped 7.3% in September from August and were down 11.3% from September 2025, CNBC reported. Realtor.com carried the same figures. The biggest monthly drops were in the South (-8.2%) and the West (-9.2%).

The headline is about buyers. This piece is about the people who get paid when a house changes hands, and why a contract that was never signed in September shows up on their books in December.

Why buyers walked: the same payment buys less house

CNBC, citing Mortgage News Daily, said the 30-year rate started September near 6.8% and reached 7.6% by month end. Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the average at 7.40% on October 15, against 6.76% on September 10 and 6.27% in the week of October 16, 2025.

Take a $350,000 loan over 30 years. The principal and interest payment is about $2,160 at last October's 6.27%, about $2,272 at 6.76% and about $2,423 at 7.40%. That is $264 a month more than a year ago, or roughly $3,165 a year. Turn it around: a buyer who wants to keep last year's $2,160 payment can now borrow about $311,900, which is $38,100 less house on the same monthly budget, about 11%. That is close to the 11.3% annual drop in contracts. We are not claiming rates explain all of it, only that the size is plausible. NAR's chief economist Lawrence Yun said housing affordability "is more affected by changes in mortgage rates" than by job and income gains.

The independent agent: the hit arrives in winter

Contracts signed in September generally close in the following month or two, so October and November income for an agent is mostly already in the pipeline. The gap opens in December through February, when the deals that would have been signed this fall are missing.

Illustrative case: an agent who closed 20 deals in the year-ago pace, at a $350,000 sale price, 2.5% commission on their side and a 70/30 split with the brokerage, keeps about $6,125 per deal. An 11.3% drop is 2.3 fewer deals, or about $13,800 in income. That is a rounded figure from assumptions, not a market average, so substitute your own price, rate and split. The cushion is thin for a part-time agent with no listings, which is where the pain concentrates. Realtor.com notes asking prices have fallen for 11 straight months and inventory is rising, so listings exist; buyers are the missing half.

The mover: fixed trucks, variable jobs

A moving crew's costs are mostly fixed: truck payments, insurance, a year-round core crew. Revenue follows jobs. Suppose a firm books 40 local residential moves a month at $2,000 and half are tied to a home purchase or sale. An 11.3% drop in that half is about 2.3 jobs a month, about $4,500 in revenue, nearly all of it margin because the truck payment does not shrink. Our data shows 42,966 independent moving companies listed on CheckThisBiz, with the most in Texas (4,510), California (3,536) and Florida (2,472). Texas and California fall in the South and West regions where contracts dropped the most. Moving is also seasonal, so a slow winter after a weak fall is a cash-flow question; our moving-company funding page covers how owners in the trade bridge the off-season.

The HVAC, plumbing or roofing contractor: two revenue streams, one softens

Home-service trades earn from two places: emergency and maintenance calls, which do not depend on the housing market, and work tied to a sale, such as pre-listing repairs, inspection items and new-owner replacements. Only the second falls when contracts do. A contractor who gets, say, a fifth of revenue from sale-related jobs would lose about 2.3% of total revenue on an 11.3% drop (0.2 x 11.3%). That is small enough to absorb, which is the point: the exposed businesses are the ones with high shares of transaction work. CheckThisBiz lists 40,729 independent HVAC firms, 34,694 roofers and 27,975 plumbers. The one-fifth share is an assumption; check your own invoices for the real figure.

What to do, and what to leave alone

• Agents: list your signed contracts by closing date now and see what December looks like. Do not cut the marketing that produces listings, since inventory is what is rising.
• Movers: lean toward the rental and commercial moves that do not depend on a mortgage, and hold off on a new truck until you see two more months of data.
• Home-service contractors: push maintenance agreements, which keep revenue steady when sales slow, and measure how much of your work is transaction-driven before you change anything.

The honest answer for most owners is to wait. This is one month of data, and Realtor.com's senior economist Hannah Jones expects rates to stay elevated, with markets pricing the possibility of another Fed hike before year end. Housing starts fell 4.56% to an annual pace of 859,000 in September, CNBC said, and builder sentiment is at a 14-year low, so new construction will not fill the gap. We looked at that side in our builder sentiment piece, and at borrowers already carrying loans in our adjustable-rate reset story. Track the weekly rate on our real estate desk.

Sources: CNBC; Realtor.com News; National Association of Realtors figures as reported by both; Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey; Mortgage News Daily as cited by CNBC; CheckThisBiz business counts. Payment arithmetic is the Chronicle's, using 30-year fixed principal and interest only. We could not open NAR's own release this morning. This is market information, not investment advice.