The median asking price for a home in the United States fell to $419,250 in September, down 1.2 percent from August and 1.4 percent from a year earlier, Realtor.com reported on September 30. Over the same month, 20.8 percent of listings carried a price cut, up 0.9 percentage points from a year ago and the highest share for any September since 2018. Sellers are lowering their prices more often even as the typical asking price drifts down, and the number of homes under contract slipped 4.1 percent from last year. Together, the figures describe a market where asking prices are running into buyer resistance.
What the September asking-price numbers show
The $419,250 figure is a list price, meaning what sellers are asking, not what buyers ultimately pay at closing. Realtor.com also tracks the asking price per square foot, which strips out the effect of larger or smaller homes entering the market. That measure stood at $223 in September, down 1.7 percent from a year earlier, so the decline is not only a story of smaller houses being listed. The median listing had been on the market for 61 days, one day fewer than a year earlier.
For a household preparing to list this fall, the question is whether to open at a lower price or wait and cut later. The numbers in Realtor.com’s September housing report frame the choice. One listing in five had already taken a reduction, and contracts were falling. Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist, put it this way: “Inventory is improving and more sellers are adjusting prices, yet the decline in pending sales makes clear that affordability remains a central constraint.”
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A price cut share of 20.8 percent means roughly one in every five active listings has been marked down at least once since it was posted. The share was 0.9 points higher than in September 2025, and no September since 2018 has recorded a higher one. Because the asking price is the one number a seller controls, the share shows how many owners have already conceded that their first price did not draw a buyer, and the median price slid even as those reductions piled up.
Where price cuts are most common
The West had the largest share of reduced listings at 22.8 percent, followed by the South at 21.6 percent, the Midwest at 20.7 percent and the Northeast at 15.2 percent. The Northeast was the only region that stayed under 20 percent, which suggests the national rise is broad rather than the product of one or two overheated markets.
The gap is widest between individual cities. In the report’s list of the 50 largest metro areas, Salt Lake City had the highest share of price reductions at 33.6 percent, while New York had the lowest at 10.3 percent. Denver followed Salt Lake City at 32.1 percent and Portland, Oregon, at 31.6 percent. In those three western metros, roughly one in three listings had been marked down, a rate about triple the New York figure.
Price per square foot moved just as unevenly. Austin fell 8.4 percent from a year earlier and Tampa fell 6.0 percent. Providence, by contrast, rose 8.9 percent and Indianapolis rose 4.7 percent. A national decline of 1.7 percent in the price per square foot is therefore an average that blends Austin’s drop of nearly five times that size with gains in cities such as Providence.
How a 7.28 percent mortgage rate squeezes asking prices
Borrowing costs are the most direct pressure on what buyers can offer. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the average 30-year fixed rate at 7.28 percent on October 1, up from 7.03 percent the week before and 6.34 percent a year earlier. Since a buyer’s monthly budget does not grow with the rate, a higher rate has to be absorbed by a lower price, a larger down payment or a decision to stay out of the market.
Shorter loans moved the same way. Freddie Mac put the 15-year fixed rate at 6.60 percent, up from 6.42 percent a week earlier and 5.55 percent a year ago. The 30-year rate was therefore 0.94 percentage points higher than in October 2025, and the 15-year rate was 1.05 points higher. For a buyer working from a fixed monthly budget, a rise of that size in either loan has to come out of the purchase price, which is the pressure sellers are answering with cuts.
The Federal Reserve’s next rate-setting meeting adds another date to watch. The central bank holds its October session on October 27 and 28, according to its calendar, and no new economic projections are scheduled for that session. A drop in rates would ease the payment squeeze on buyers, while a further rise would add pressure on the one in five sellers already marking down their prices.
Setting an asking price before the Fed’s October meeting
The free benchmark for a seller or buyer is the Freddie Mac survey, published each Thursday at noon Eastern time on its Primary Mortgage Market Survey page, which also lists its historical weekly readings back to 1971. The week-to-week rate tells a seller what monthly payment the next buyer is probably facing, which is a better guide to what a home can fetch than the national median asking price.
Local numbers matter more than the national ones. A listing in Salt Lake City, where 33.6 percent of homes were marked down, competes in a different market than one in New York, where 10.3 percent were. Comparing a home with nearby listings that have already been reduced, and with how long they have been on the market against the 61-day median, shows whether an asking price is realistic before the first cut is needed.
The September report leaves one open question for the weeks ahead: whether the rise in price cuts is the start of a broader slide or the usual autumn softening magnified by rates above 7 percent. Realtor.com’s own figures show pending sales down 4.1 percent and cuts at their highest September level since 2018, so the next monthly report will show whether sellers stopped chasing buyers or kept lowering the bar.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
