Published September 24, 2026 in Market Update

457 Homes Hit the Market in August. Zero Found a Buyer.

By Steven Rotsart

Real estate, Customizable Grid

Everyone says buyers have the power right now. More homes to choose from, more time to think, more room to push back on price. And looking at the numbers for August, that sounds right. 457 homes came on the market. Buyers had more choices than any month before it this summer. So you would expect at least a few of them to sign a contract. I pulled every listing through September 24, 2026, and here is what I found: not one did.

More choices did not produce more buyers. It produced more waiting.

June brought 390 new listings. Zero contracts. July brought 429. Zero contracts. August brought 457, the most of the three months. Still zero. New listings grew every month this summer, and not one new contract came with them.

This is the unpopular opinion: more homes for sale is not the same thing as a buyer's market. A buyer's market means buyers are buying. What we have here is buyers watching. They have data, they have time, and right now they are using both to wait.

The 30-year fixed rate averaged 7.03% as of September 24, 2026, up from 6.95% the week before and well above the 6.30% it sat at a year ago, according to Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey. That gap matters to anyone doing the math on a monthly payment. But rates alone do not explain three straight months of zero contracts. Something else is happening.

The homes that did sell tell a different story: the typical home closed at 100% of the last price the seller asked. That is the whole market, 958 homes sold, with a typical price of $860,000. Sellers who found a buyer and priced it right got what they asked. The market is not broken for everyone. It is split.

145 homes gave up entirely, coming off the market with no sale. That is a real number sitting alongside 958 that did close. The difference between those two groups is not luck. It is almost always price.

Look at how that 100% figure holds across bedroom counts. The typical 2-bedroom closed at 100% of asking, with a typical price of $535,000. The typical 3-bedroom closed at 100%, at $820,000. The typical 4-bedroom closed at 100%, at $1,011,500. Even the typical 5-bedroom hit 100%, at $1,195,000. When a home is priced to match what buyers are actually willing to pay, it closes at full price. When it is not, it joins the 145 that walked away with nothing.

Do buyers have more power when they are not signing anything?

The question is worth asking. There are 728 homes for sale right now. At the pace homes have been selling lately, that is 3.4 months of supply. Under 4 months typically favors sellers. So even with a flood of new listings and zero new contracts in August, the overall supply number still leans toward the seller.

Nationally, the months-supply of existing homes reached 4.9 months in August, described by NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun as its highest level in over ten years, according to NAR. The local picture at 3.4 months is tighter than that national number. Buyers here have more to look at than they did in spring. They do not have the upper hand the national headlines suggest.

What this means for you, whether you are buying or selling

If you are selling, the number that matters most is not how many homes are for sale. It is how many are selling. 958 homes closed in this market, and the typical one got every dollar it asked. That only happens when the price is right from the start. A home priced to sell is not leaving money behind. It is avoiding the pile of 145 that gave up with nothing.

If you are buying, zero new contracts in August does not mean zero competition on the homes that do move. It means buyers are being very selective, and the ones who move are moving on homes priced correctly. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 162,000 jobs added in August with unemployment holding at 4.1%, so the people who want to buy can still afford to wait. If you find a home priced right, do not assume the next buyer is also waiting.