The typical monthly payment on a home purchase reached $2,786 in the four weeks ending Oct. 25, the second-highest level on record, according to Redfin’s weekly housing report, published Oct. 29. The figure is seasonally adjusted, assumes a 7.32% mortgage rate and is up 10.7% from a year earlier. Pending home sales fell to 276,352, the lowest level in Redfin’s records, which go back to 2021.
Prices are giving way even as payments stay high. The median sale price was $389,601, down 0.1% from a year ago, which Redfin describes as the first decline in more than three years. It followed a 0.2% dip the week before.
For buyers, the payment is what decides whether a house is affordable, and it has risen faster than the price tag. For sellers and owners, the stalled pending-sales count means fewer deals closing at any price. Anyone planning to buy, sell or downsize before spring is working with a market where a 0.1% price drop and a 10.7% payment jump sit side by side.
Retirement deadlines, in your inbox: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and the money can be gone. Join the Retirement Money Brief and we’ll send you our 2026 Government Check Reality Tracker as a welcome gift.
Get the Brief + the check tracker →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Why is the monthly payment still near a record?
The payment is figured at the weekly average mortgage rate. The median asking price, seasonally adjusted, was $400,703, up 1.2% from a year ago, and the mortgage rate was 7.32%, down from 7.4% the week before but still near a three-year high. The release says the payment was the highest in Redfin’s records except for the prior week.
The rate gap is the main driver. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 7.24% on Oct. 29, down from 7.32% the prior week and up from 6.17% a year earlier. Its 15-year rate was 6.60%, compared with 5.41% a year ago.
How low did pending sales fall?
Pending sales dropped 15.9% from a year earlier and 1.8% from the week before, the lowest level in Redfin’s records. Redfin says pending sales declined in every metro area it analyzed for the third week in a row. The five steepest drops were Seattle (down 31.6%), Atlanta (25.9%), San Diego (25.3%), Las Vegas (22.7%) and Denver (22.3%).
New listings, seasonally adjusted, came to 352,421, down 4% from a year ago and the lowest since January. Active listings rose 2.2% to 1,510,619. Redfin put months of supply at 4.5, up from 4, and notes that 4 to 5 months is generally considered a balanced market.
Which cities are seeing prices fall?
Seattle had the largest drop in median sale price at 5.1% from a year ago, followed by San Jose, California (down 4.9%) and Austin, Texas (down 4.6%). Kansas City, Missouri fell 4.3% and Nashville, Tennessee fell 3.3%, according to the PR Newswire release carried on Finviz.
Nationally, the market is slowing in smaller ways. Homes that went off the market within two weeks made up 27.5% of listings, down from 28.5%, and the median home spent 50 days on the market. The share of listings with a price drop rose to 21.5% from 20.9%, while 23.2% of homes sold above list price and the average sale-to-list ratio held at 98.3%.
What does a flat price and a high payment mean for people who already own?
A homeowner who bought years ago is not paying $2,786 on a new loan, but the same market sets what the house is worth and what a move would cost. With pending sales at a record low and new listings at their lowest since January, a seller may wait longer for an offer, and a buyer who needs financing faces a payment that rose 10.7% in a year.
The costs that stay with a house after the purchase do not wait for the market. Insurance, property taxes and repairs arrive on their own schedule, and they are the part of housing a homeowner can still shop and appeal. Anyone who plans to stay put through the winter can compare those bills against last year’s before the new year resets them.
What is your own house costing you right now?
A payment of $2,786 and a market where pending sales hit a record low leave homeowners with fewer ways to cut housing costs by moving. That puts the bills attached to the house they already own in front of them.
“Cut Your House Costs” covers a lower home insurance bill by shopping and asking for every discount, and it includes a home-cost audit worksheet that lines up every cost of the house on one page. It is written for homeowners 60 and older.
Get the home-cost audit worksheet and the lower-insurance-bill steps in Cut Your House Costs →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
