Home sellers cut asking prices on 20.4% of active listings in August, according to Realtor.com’s latest housing report, the highest monthly share so far in 2026 and the first month this year in which price cuts have matched the pace set a year earlier. The retreat comes as the 30-year mortgage rate averaged 6.66% the same week, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, up from a 2026 low near 6.05% in February and now running above where it stood twelve months ago. Pending home sales fell year over year for the first time since November, ending an eight-month streak of gains, even as sellers have so far avoided the mass delistings that marked last year’s slowdown.
Price Cuts Finally Catch Up to Last Year’s Pace
Realtor.com’s August 2026 Monthly Housing Trends Report found that 20.4% of active listings carried a price reduction, up 0.4 percentage points from July and, in the company’s own words, “the first reading in 2026 to equal the prior-year rate.” 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%), but the pattern is reversing underneath those averages: the Northeast and Midwest are now running 1.2 and 0.8 percentage points above their own year-ago price-cut rates, while the South and West have nearly closed the gap that used to separate them from the softer coastal markets.
The spread is broadening geographically as well. Twenty-seven of the 50 largest metro areas had a price-cut rate above the prior year in August, up from a minority in July, with Denver (31.4%), Portland, Oregon (30.5%) and Salt Lake City (30.3%) cutting most often and Hartford, Connecticut (10.1%), New York (10.2%) and Buffalo (11.1%) cutting least. “Price cuts, pending sales and delistings together can tell you whether sellers are satisfied, panicking, or somewhere in between,” Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel said in the report, describing August as “a mixed reading” in which buyer demand softened and price cuts rose modestly above last year’s pace.
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Mortgage Rates Grinding Toward Their Least Favorable Point in a Year
The 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.66% for the week ending August 27, 2026, “slightly up from last week when it averaged 6.65%” and above the 6.56% recorded a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac’s own weekly survey. That single week-over-year comparison matters because it marks a reversal: rates had been running meaningfully below year-ago levels for most of the spring, and the gap has now flipped positive after six consecutive months of increases from the 2026 low near 6.05% in February. Freddie Mac’s own commentary framed the broader picture more calmly than the rate trend suggests, noting that “the economy remains resilient” and that “more homes coming on the market and slower price growth in many areas are giving buyers better options.”
That framing sits awkwardly next to Realtor.com’s numbers on actual buyer behavior. Contract signings — the step after an offer is accepted but before a sale closes — fell 3.7% year over year in August, the second straight monthly drop as higher borrowing costs weigh more heavily on demand at exactly the time of year activity typically starts winding down anyway. Homes spent a median of 60 days on the market, three days longer than in July, though notably unchanged from a year ago, meaning the slowdown is showing up more in whether buyers write offers at all than in how long a listing lingers once it is priced realistically.
Sellers Aren’t Panicking Yet, Even as Demand Cools
Pending home sales fell 0.2% year over year in August, according to Realtor.com, ending an eight-month streak of annual gains that had peaked at 4.1% in May and marking the first such decline since November. Yet sellers have not responded the way they did during the same stretch last year: delistings — sellers pulling a home off the market rather than accept a lower price — ran 12.6% below last year’s pace in August, following declines of 8.3% in June and 4.7% in July, and the share of active inventory being delisted has held flat at roughly 5.5% for six weeks.
Active listings climbed 3.6% year over year to 1,140,035, the fastest annual growth rate so far in 2026, though Realtor.com attributes much of that acceleration to a weaker comparison point — a wave of delistings reduced supply in August 2025 — rather than a sudden surge of new inventory this year. National inventory still sits 11.1% below typical pre-pandemic levels, a reminder that even a cooling market is starting from a structural shortage rather than a glut.
Realtor.com’s own economists frame what comes next as an open question rather than a settled trend: whether the gap in delistings compared with 2025 persists or reverses into fall, whether sellers increasingly lean on price reductions — including repeat cuts on the same listing — and how the regional split evolves, particularly the growing softness showing up in the Midwest and Northeast, two regions that had largely escaped the price corrections seen elsewhere in the country over the past several years.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
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