Existing-home sales fell in October to the slowest pace since August 2010

Documented: The National Association of Realtors reported on November 12, 2026, that existing-home sales fell 5.5% from September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million in October. That was below the roughly 3.85–3.86 million pace economists had expected and 8.8% below October 2025. NAR and Reuters both describe the rate as the lowest since August 2010, when sales were still falling after a federal homebuyer tax credit expired. Sales declined in the Midwest, South, and West and were unchanged in the Northeast; every region was lower than a year earlier. Single-family sales fell 5.8% to 3.41 million. The West dropped 9.7% to 650,000, down 14.5% year over year.

The same release shows why the transaction freeze is not a price collapse. Inventory rose 1.3% from September to 1.59 million units, a 5.1-month supply—the highest months’ supply Reuters noted since November 2015—yet the national median price still edged up 0.4% from a year earlier to $416,700, the 40th straight annual gain. The South was the exception on price, with the median down 0.4%. NAR’s housing affordability index fell to 100.7 from 107.3 a year earlier, with declines in all four regions. Distressed sales stayed at 2% of transactions.

NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun’s documented explanation is rate-driven, not a wave of forced selling: “Home buying is difficult when mortgage rates have climbed to their highest levels since 2000, aside from a single month in 2023.” NAR, citing Freddie Mac, put the average 30-year fixed rate in October at 7.33%, up from 6.86% in September and 6.25% a year earlier. Closings reflect contracts signed weeks earlier, so October’s print is a lagging snapshot of a rate spike, not a real-time clearing of the market.

Who is still transacting is part of the record. In NAR’s October REALTORS Confidence Index survey, first-time buyers were 29% of sales, down from 32% a year earlier, while individual investors or second-home buyers were 20%, up from 16%. Cash sales were 29%. Properties sat a median 35 days, up from 33 in September. Those monthly shares are not the same series as NAR’s separate annual buyer profile, which earlier in November put the first-time share of buyers at 22% and the typical first-time buyer’s age at a record 40. Both point the same direction: entry is harder; the monthly survey does not by itself establish the annual age figure.

Claimed, not independently measured here: Yun said most of the country’s 88 million homeowners remain in a comfortable position because of accumulated equity, and that “there could be sizable pent-up demand if mortgage rates decline.” The equity comfort and the size of any pent-up demand are his interpretation. What the data establish is narrower: volume is at a 16-year low, listed supply is no longer scarce by recent standards, and prices have not broken. That is the lock-in pattern in numbers—owners with older, cheaper mortgages have little reason to list into a 7% market, so the homes that do sell still clear near last year’s prices while would-be movers and first-time buyers stay out. Speculated: whether rates falling would unlock a large wave of sales, or whether prices would have to give way first in weaker regions such as the South and West. Neither outcome is in the October report.