The median price of an existing home in the United States reached $417,500 in September, up 1.3% from $412,300 a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors says. It was the 39th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains, and it came while home sales sat near their slowest pace of 2026.
NAR released the September figures on October 13. Inman reported that NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun called $417,500 the highest median ever recorded for a September.
What the $417,500 median measures
The median is the midpoint of every existing home sold in the month: half sold for more, half for less. NAR’s figure covers single-family homes, condos and co-ops together, so it is a national snapshot rather than the price of any particular house or town.
The year-over-year gain works out to $5,200, or 1.3%. By type, NAR put the September existing-home sales report single-family median at $422,700 and the condo and co-op median at $363,700, each up 1.2% from a year before.
Prices in a given month reflect contracts signed earlier. Yun said September closings mostly reflect August contracts, before the sharpest rise in mortgage rates, so the price data trail the latest move in borrowing costs.
For a household, the median is a yardstick for what a typical purchase costs and roughly where a typical owned home may stand. Anyone who owns a home, or plans to sell or buy one, is watching the same number, but property taxes are assessed locally, so a national median cannot say what any single tax bill will do.
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Prices kept rising while fewer homes changed hands
Sales rose 1.5% from August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.99 million, but they were still 2.2% below September 2025. Yun said August and September were the two slowest months for home sales this year.
The supply side moved the other way. Inventory reached 1.60 million homes, up 4.6% from a year earlier, which is 4.8 months of supply at the current sales pace against 4.5 months a year ago. Inman reported that the inventory is the highest since November 2019. Yun said supply is “not really an issue anymore” and that “it’s really the demand that is contracting.”
Homes also took longer to sell. The median time on the market was 33 days, up from 31 in August. Yun said higher inventory and lengthening days on market give buyers improved negotiating power, which is one reason a rising median and weak sales can show up in the same month.
Mortgage rates have moved since the September closings
Freddie Mac’s average 30-year fixed rate was 6.86% in September, up from 6.67% in August and 6.35% a year earlier, according to NAR. The rate has climbed since. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put it at 7.40% on October 15.
The survey archive shows the 30-year average at 7.28% on October 1 and 7.40% on both October 8 and October 15. Yun said further increases in mortgage rates in recent weeks mean fewer buyers can qualify to purchase a home.
He told reporters that fourth-quarter closings “will clearly be down, maybe even measurably down” if rates stay well above 7%. NAR’s Housing Affordability Index slipped to 105.4 in September from 106.7 a year earlier.
Yun said buyers should treat rates at or slightly above 7% as “the new normal.” Inman reported that the share of agents expecting buyer traffic to rise over the next three months fell to 8%, from 13% in August and 20% a year earlier. Lockbox traffic, was down 3% from a year ago, and 16% of contracts had delayed settlements over the past three months, up from 14% in August.
A rough illustration shows why the rate move matters more to buyers than the price move. With 20% down on a median-priced home, the loan would be about $334,000. At September’s 6.86% average, principal and interest on a 30-year fixed loan comes to roughly $2,191 a month. At October’s 7.40%, it is roughly $2,313, about $122 more every month.
Who bought at the higher median
First-time buyers made up 31% of September sales, up from 30% in August and a year earlier. Cash sales were 27% of transactions, unchanged from August and down from 30% in September 2025.
Individual investors and second-home buyers accounted for 20% of sales, up from 15% in August. Single-family sales ran at 3.64 million, down 1.9% from a year earlier, while condo and co-op sales were 350,000, down 5.4%. Yun said investors are “stepping in a bit.” Distressed sales were 2%, unchanged from both August and a year earlier.
The regional picture was uneven. The Northeast had the largest annual gain, up 4.7% to $523,600, while the West was the only region where the median fell, down 0.3% to $613,600. The national median blends those very different local markets into one number.
That leaves the open question for homeowners: the national median has risen for 39 straight months, but what it does to a particular tax bill depends on how the local assessor values the house and what relief the state or county offers.
Wondering how a rising home value reaches the property tax bill?
A median that has climbed for 39 months is a national number, but the tax bill is set by a county or city assessor. Homeowners on fixed incomes are the ones for whom a reassessment or a bigger bill does the most damage.
The housing numbers answer what homes sell for. The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit takes up the separate question of what it costs to keep one, starting with the 5 kinds of property-tax relief for older homeowners. Its 64 pages include a part on reading the tax bill line by line and another on appealing the assessment.
Get the property-tax relief guide and bill-reading steps for homeowners as values rise →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
