Realtor.com counted 1,161,615 homes actively for sale across the country in September, 5.4 percent more than a year earlier, and the gap between today’s inventory and a typical pre-pandemic market narrowed to 9.1 percent. It was the first time that gap has dropped below 10 percent. The growth did not come from a flood of new sellers. New listings slipped 0.7 percent to 394,830, and homes going under contract fell 4.1 percent, so houses are arriving at about the old pace and leaving more slowly.
Listings up, new sellers flat
Realtor.com’s September housing report, released September 30, puts the supply count in a longer story. Senior Economist Jake Krimmel put the shift in one sentence: “More homes are available than they were a year ago, and the inventory gap with the pre-pandemic market is closing.” The 9.1 percent shortfall is still a shortfall, but it is closing month by month.
Homeowners weighing a sale are asking the obvious follow-up: will the house take longer to sell? The report’s median time on market was 61 days, one day shorter than in September 2025, so the typical listing has not yet slowed. That figure describes homes that did sell or go under contract, though, and it sits beside a 4.1 percent drop in contracts. A seller listing today competes with more neighbors than a year ago, while fewer buyers are signing, and that combination is what tends to stretch a listing’s time on market later.
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The mismatch between listings and sales explains most of the monthly change. When new listings are flat and fewer homes are being taken off the market through a sale, the stock of unsold homes builds on its own. Active listings count everything on the market on a given day, including homes listed in July or August that never found a buyer. That is why inventory rose 5.4 percent even as the flow of fresh listings fell, and why economists watch the pending-sales line as closely as the inventory total.
Northeast and Midwest lead the gain
The increase was uneven across the country. Active listings were up 11.6 percent in the Northeast and 11.3 percent in the Midwest from a year earlier, 6.2 percent in the West and only 2.6 percent in the South. Forty-three of the 50 largest metro areas had more homes for sale than a year ago, which leaves seven where inventory was flat or lower. The Northeast and Midwest are adding listings more than four times as fast as the South.
Other trackers count differently, which is why headline totals do not match. Zillow’s September report, published October 6, counted 1.39 million homes for sale, up 2.5 percent from a year earlier, with 343,311 new listings, up 0.4 percent. Realtor.com’s count is 1,161,615 and up 5.4 percent. The companies use different listing feeds and definitions, and the sizes of the gains differ, but both show more homes on the market than last September and both show new listings barely moving.
Seen across the two reports, the supply recovery is real but narrow. Neither finds sellers rushing to list; both find buyers pulling back. The inventory increase is therefore less a sign of a seller wave than a sign that homes are lingering long enough to be counted, and the regional gap between the Northeast’s double-digit gain and the South’s 2.6 percent shows that the lingering is not spread evenly. A market can feel crowded in one metro and tight in the next, even when the national average looks mild.
Buyers gain leverage, but rates hold them back
Mortgage rates are the likeliest reason sales are lagging behind supply. Zillow said newly pending sales, a leading indicator of future closings, fell 8.5 percent from a year earlier and noted that mortgage rates ended September at 7.28 percent, the highest reading since November 2023. Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said “September’s housing data shows that buyers are gaining leverage, but higher mortgage rates are limiting how much of that opportunity they can use.” More choice, in other words, has not translated into more closings.
Hale’s remark describes a buyer who can negotiate on the house but cannot do much about the loan. Buyers in that spot can wait out a slow listing, ask for repairs or credits and walk away more easily than a year ago. Sellers have the opposite problem, since a home listed into rising supply and falling contracts has fewer natural buyers. The two reports agree on the direction of that squeeze, even though neither can say how long rates will stay above 7 percent.
The 4.1 percent drop in contracts is the figure most likely to show up in later data. A home that goes under contract in September typically closes in October or November, so the pending decline foreshadows weaker closed-sales numbers in the next existing-home sales reports. If sales stay weak while listings stay flat, inventory will keep building, and the 9.1 percent gap to pre-pandemic levels will keep shrinking.
Reading the next report before listing
Sellers deciding when to list can follow two public numbers each week. Freddie Mac, the federally chartered mortgage investor, publishes its Primary Mortgage Market Survey every Thursday, and its latest reading showed the 30-year fixed rate at 7.28 percent on October 1, up from 7.03 percent a week earlier and 6.34 percent a year earlier. Rates, more than listing counts, set what buyers can afford to offer, and a move down would likely revive the contracts that fell 4.1 percent in September.
Realtor.com’s October report will show whether inventory keeps growing and whether the gap to pre-pandemic levels falls further below 10 percent. The first test is pending sales. If contracts stay negative while new listings stay near 395,000 a month, active inventory will keep climbing without any rise in seller activity, and the 61-day median for time on market, the figure sellers see most directly, will be the next to move.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
