Unsold homes across the country equaled 4.9 months of supply in August, the highest level in over ten years, according to the National Association of Realtors’ latest existing-home sales report. Total inventory climbed to 1.62 million units, up 5.9 percent from a year earlier, even as the pace of actual sales slowed. For sellers competing against a fast-growing pool of listings, including retirees hoping to downsize into something smaller, the shift means more competition and, for the first time in years, buyers with real room to negotiate.
A supply number, not a carrying cost: NAR tracks how long a listing sits, not what that wait costs in property taxes, and The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit lists the 5 kinds of relief that can offset it. See the five property-tax relief programs →
Months of supply: the metric behind the decade-high number
Months of supply measures how long it would take to sell every home currently listed at the pace homes are actually selling, and in August that figure reached 4.9 months, which the National Association of Realtors describes as the highest level in over ten years. A higher number signals a market tilting toward buyers: more choices sit on the market relative to how quickly they are moving. NAR’s report covers August 2026 existing-home sales nationwide, the trade group’s monthly gauge of the resale market.
The rise is happening even though sales themselves slowed. Existing-home sales ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.98 million in August, down 2.0 percent from July and 1.2 percent from a year earlier, while the median days a listing spent on the market ticked up to 31, from 29 in July, landing back at the same 31 days recorded in August a year ago. Supply is climbing less because homes are sitting dramatically longer and more because new listings are arriving faster than buyers are absorbing them.
For an older seller who has owned the same house for decades, the practical effect of a rising months-of-supply figure is less about the 31-day median time already spent on the market and more about competition: a buyer touring one listed home this fall very likely tours several nearby alternatives as well, a dynamic that is more common when supply runs this high than when the market runs tighter and inventory is scarce.
1.62 million listings and where the growth is coming from
Total housing inventory reached 1.62 million units in August, up 3.2 percent from July and 5.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the same NAR report. That year-over-year increase is the underlying driver of the 4.9-month supply figure, since the sales pace used in the calculation actually fell over the same period. A market can reach a decade-high months-of-supply reading either because listings surge or because sales collapse; August’s data shows the first mechanism doing most of the work.
Financing conditions moved in the opposite direction of what would typically cool a market further: the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate NAR cited was 6.67 percent in August, up from 6.54 percent in July and 6.59 percent a year earlier. A slightly higher rate did not stop inventory from growing, which suggests sellers, not rate-sensitive buyers, are the side of the market adding the most new listings right now.
Not every region is adding listings at the same pace. NAR’s regional breakdown for August shows existing-home sales fell most sharply in the Northeast, down 4.0 percent from July, while the West’s sales pace held roughly flat month over month; price growth also diverged sharply, with the Northeast’s median price up 4.3 percent year over year to $556,900 even as the West’s median slipped 0.2 percent to $619,100. A single national supply figure can obscure how differently a seller’s local market is behaving depending on region.
Prices, meanwhile, kept climbing despite the added supply: the national median existing-home price was $429,100 in August, up 1.6 percent from a year earlier and marking the 38th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains, per NAR. Rising supply has so far slowed the pace of price appreciation rather than reversing it, a distinction that matters for an older owner counting on home equity as part of a retirement plan rather than for a buyer hoping a glut of listings will translate into falling prices.
Why the supply shift lands differently on sellers and downsizers
NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, tied the inventory build directly to leverage, saying the current level of supply gives buyers better opportunities to negotiate than they have had in years. That framing cuts two ways for older households: a retiree trying to sell a long-held family home now competes against the largest pool of alternative listings in over a decade, while a retiree looking to buy something smaller benefits from the same crowded market as a shopper with more options and less pressure to overbid.
The Housing Affordability Index, a separate NAR measure of how a typical income compares with the cost of a typical mortgage, rose to 104.7 in August from 101.2 a year earlier, meaning affordability improved even as prices kept climbing, largely because more supply and slower sales blunted some of the price pressure buyers would otherwise face. That improvement is modest, and it applies to buyers financing a purchase far more than to the growing share of transactions done entirely in cash.
What NAR’s August report does not settle is whether 4.9 months represents a peak or a stop along the way to an even looser market. The trade group’s own comparison, the highest level in over ten years, only measures how the current month stacks up against roughly a decade of data behind it, not where supply goes from here, leaving sellers weighing whether to list this fall or wait for whatever the next report shows.
A decade-high inventory number with no moving-cost line item
NAR’s report puts a hard number on how much supply has grown, but it says nothing about what a longer time on market costs a seller in property taxes, insurance or upkeep on a house that isn’t selling as fast as it used to.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit lists the 5 kinds of property-tax relief and the circuit-breaker credit that includes renters, covering costs that keep accruing regardless of how long a listing sits.
Compare the five property-tax relief programs inside The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
