September Home Sales Rise 1.5% as Prices Reach $417,500
Existing-home sales across the country edged higher in September, though the gain was small and followed several of the slowest months of the year. The National Association of Realtors reported a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 3.99 million sales, up 1.5% from August and 2.2% below September of last year, according to its September report. For anyone trying to read the housing market from the outside, that single sentence holds a lot of moving parts, and this article takes them one at a time.
The short version is that activity ticked up from a low base while prices kept rising at a slower rate than in recent years. The longer version involves how the annual pace is calculated, what the inventory figures mean for buyers and sellers, and why a report on September closings says more about the summer than about the fall.
How the annual pace works
Headline sales figures are expressed as a seasonally adjusted annual rate, which means the number is not a count of homes sold in September. It takes the month’s activity, adjusts for the usual seasonal swings, and scales it to a full year. A pace of 3.99 million therefore says that if September’s rhythm held for twelve months, about 3.99 million existing homes would change hands. The figure is useful mainly for comparing one month with another, and for that purpose it shows a 1.5% rise from August and a 2.2% decline from a year earlier.
Both comparisons matter. The monthly gain suggests some stabilization, while the yearly decline shows the market still running below where it stood twelve months ago. Bloomberg Television described the month as the first rise in existing-home sales in four months, which fits a market that has been stuck near the bottom of its recent range rather than one that has started to recover in earnest.
Prices keep rising, more slowly
The median existing-home price came in at $417,500, up 1.3% from $412,300 a year earlier. NAR counted it as the 39th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains. Three years of unbroken increases is a long streak, though the size of the current gain is modest next to the double-digit jumps of the pandemic years, so price growth looks to be cooling even though it has not reversed.
A median is the middle sale price, with half of homes selling for more and half for less. It is a better guide than an average because a handful of very expensive sales cannot pull it upward, but it also shifts with the mix of homes that close in a given month. When more entry-level homes close, the median can dip without any individual house losing value, and when luxury closings rise, the opposite happens. That caveat applies to every median quoted in this series.
Inventory and months of supply
Unsold inventory stood at 1.60 million homes, 1.9% higher than August and 4.6% above a year ago. At the September sales pace that works out to 4.8 months of supply, compared with 4.5 months a year earlier. Months of supply answers a simple question: if no new homes were listed, how long would it take to sell everything currently on the market at the recent pace of sales?
Five to six months is the range commonly cited as a balanced market, so 4.8 months sits slightly on the seller side while giving buyers more choice than they had a year ago. Rising inventory combined with only modest sales growth is the pattern that eventually slows price gains, which is why the supply numbers are worth watching alongside the price headline.
September closings reflect the summer
Most September closings reflect contracts signed in July and August, when 30-year mortgage rates sat in the 6.5% range. Real Estate News noted that rates then climbed to about 7% in late September and early October, so the October and November reports will be the first to show how much of a bite the higher rates take. Nancy Vanden Houten of Oxford Economics told the outlet that she expects rates to stay above 7% for the rest of the year and sales to remain below 4 million for several quarters.
The lag between signing and closing, typically a month or more, is the reason a sales report can look calm while conditions are already changing. A buyer who signed a contract in August locked in the circumstances of August. A buyer shopping in October faces October’s rates, and that difference will show up in the data with a delay. The Freddie Mac weekly survey at freddiemac.com/pmms offers the quickest read on where rates stand each Thursday.
What it means closer to home
For North Shore households the national figure is background rather than a forecast. Long Island moves on its own supply and price levels, and the September local data, covered in Nassau and Suffolk medians for September, sits far above the national median. A seller can use the national picture to understand the direction of the broader market, while a buyer can use it to anticipate how much negotiating room might exist. Neither should substitute it for current comparable sales in the specific neighborhood in question.
Anyone planning a purchase or a sale in the coming months may find it useful to separate three questions: what the national trend says about direction, what local sales say about price, and what current rates say about monthly cost. Each answer comes from a different source, and the three do not always point the same way.
This article reports published figures for general information. It is not financial, legal or lending advice, and every number reflects the date of its source, so confirm current figures before acting on them.
