Zillow: US home values slip in September as pending sales drop 8.5%

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The typical home in the United States was worth US$366,913 in September 2026, 0.5% less than in August, according to the September Market Report that Zillow published on Tuesday 6 October. The same release shows newly pending sales 8.5% lower than a year earlier and 11.2% lower than the month before, a slowdown the listings company sums up in its headline as an early winter for the housing market.

Zillow is a data firm reporting on its own listings and its own index, and the figures below are its own. They cover September, they are national unless a metro area is named, and the sales figure is labelled preliminary by Zillow itself. The report also carries a section on rents, which belongs to a separate article and is left aside here.

Zillow, September Market Report, press release dated 6 October 2026. National figures for September 2026.

A monthly fall, a small annual gain

The headline number is the Zillow Home Value Index, the firm's measure of the typical home value. At US$366,913 it stood 0.5% below its August level. Measured over twelve months the picture is different: the same index is still 1% above September 2025.

Those two figures are worth reading together. A value that is lower than last month but higher than last year describes a market that turned down in the latest month, not one that has been falling for a year. The annual gain is thin, but Zillow's report does not say that values have fallen on the year at national level. That only happens in a group of metro areas, most of them in the South and the West, which are set out further down.

It also helps to be clear about what the index is not. It is not the median price of the homes that happened to sell in September, and it is not an asking price. Other firms publish those measures, and they give other numbers, as a later section shows.

Fewer deals agreed, and slower ones

The sharper movement in the report is in activity. Newly pending sales, the listings that moved to pending status during the month, were down 8.5% from September 2025 and down 11.2% from August 2026. A pending sale is a deal agreed but not yet closed, so the figure says something about the closings still to come in the autumn.

Completed sales fell too, though by less. Zillow's preliminary estimate, which it calls a nowcast, counts 319,346 sales in September, 2.5% fewer than a year earlier and 5.6% fewer than in August. Because the figure is preliminary, it may be revised in a later release.

Homes are also taking a little longer to find a buyer. The median listing went pending after 29 days, according to Zillow, two days longer than a year earlier and two days longer than in August. That puts both earlier readings at 27 days.

One figure in the report runs a month behind the others. In August, 27.6% of homes sold above their list price. That is slightly more than the 26.9% of August 2025, but it is two percentage points less than the 29.6% recorded in July. In other words, the share of sellers who obtained more than they asked was already shrinking before September's fall in pending sales.

Zillow's chief economist, Mischa Fisher, attributes the slowdown in the for-sale market to the level of mortgage rates and describes it in the release as predictable. He adds that the firm expects sales to stay below last year's level through the fourth quarter. That is a forecast from one data firm, not an established fact, and it concerns the number of sales, not prices.

What a buyer pays each month

The report gives the cost side of the same story. Mortgage rates ended September at 7.28%, which Zillow, citing Freddie Mac, describes as the highest level since November 2023.

On Zillow's calculation, the typical monthly mortgage payment on a home bought in September was US$1,922. The assumptions matter: the figure supposes a 20% down payment and leaves out property taxes and insurance, so it is a floor for the true monthly cost of owning, not the full bill. That payment is 6.7% higher than a year earlier.

Set next to the home value figure, the contrast is plain. The typical home is worth 1% more than last September; the typical payment on it is 6.7% more. The value of the home explains only a small part of the rise in the payment.

Zillow also relates the payment to earnings. The mortgage took 34.3% of the median income in September, against 33.7% a year earlier, a rise of 0.6 of a percentage point. The move within the last month was almost as large: the share was 33.9% in August, so it rose 0.4 of a point in a single month. For a buyer deciding in September whether to make an offer, the monthly sum had become heavier than it was for one deciding in August, even though the typical home was worth slightly less.

More homes on the market, more price cuts

Supply did not shrink to match the weaker demand. Zillow counted 1.39 million homes for sale in September, 2.5% more than a year earlier, although 1.5% fewer than in August.

The flow of fresh listings was close to flat on the year. Owners put 343,311 new listings on the market in September, 0.4% more than in September 2025 and 3.9% fewer than in August. Zillow adds that new listings remain 11.9% below what it calls the pre-pandemic baseline. The stock of homes for sale has grown over the year, then, while the flow of new listings has barely changed, a combination consistent with homes staying on the market longer.

Sellers who are on the market are adjusting. A price cut was recorded on 27.4% of listings in September, according to Zillow, compared with 26.2% a year earlier and 26.3% in August. That is a rise of 1.1 percentage points in one month, after a change of only 0.1 of a point between September 2025 and August 2026.

For listing agents, the three numbers that describe the conversation with a seller are all in this section and the one before: a median of 29 days to reach pending status, more than one listing in four with a reduced price, and a pool of buyers whose monthly payment is 6.7% higher than last year's.

The metro map: north and east up, south and west down

The national average hides a clear geographical split. Among the metro areas Zillow lists, values rose fastest over the year in Chicago, Hartford, Milwaukee and New York, all by about 5%, while Austin recorded the largest fall. Between Chicago at the top and Austin at the bottom, the gap is nine percentage points.

Four of the nine falling metros in Zillow's list are in Texas: Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. San Francisco is the exception on the West Coast, with values up 3.7% and a typical value above US$1.1 million, while Seattle is down 2.2%.

Inventory helps to explain some of these differences, though not all. The number of homes for sale rose 20.3% over the year in Seattle, the largest increase among the metros Zillow lists, and values there fell. In San Francisco inventory dropped 12.3%, and values rose. But Cleveland does not fit the pattern: its inventory grew 16.6% and its values still gained 3.8%. Other large increases in homes for sale were recorded in Minneapolis, at 16.8%, Louisville, at 16%, Boston, at 15%, and Washington DC, at 13.2%. Inventory fell most in Miami, by 13.9%, and in Jacksonville, by 12.4%.

Sales tell a third story, and here the weakest markets are spread across the country.

Every one of those six metros lost sales at more than three times the national rate of 2.5%. A few markets moved the other way. Zillow's nowcast shows sales up 7.5% in Oklahoma City, 7.2% in Louisville, 6.3% in Buffalo and 5.9% in Orlando. Louisville is an interesting case, since it appears both among the metros where inventory grew most and among those where sales grew most: more homes were offered there, and more were bought.

How other trackers read the same month

Zillow is one of several firms that publish monthly or weekly readings of the US market, and their September numbers do not match. They are not meant to: each firm works from its own listings and defines its measures in its own way.

Realtor.com's September report, released on 30 September, put the median list price at US$419,250, down 1.4% on the year, which it counted as the eleventh annual decline in a row. It found 1,161,615 active listings, 5.4% more than a year earlier and 9.1% below the pre-pandemic level, with new listings down 0.7% at 394,830 and pending sales down 4.1%. Homes spent a median of 61 days on the market, and 20.8% of listings carried a price reduction, which Realtor.com called the highest September share since 2018.

Redfin, in an update published on 17 September covering the four weeks to 13 September, counted 299,126 pending sales, 5.4% fewer than a year earlier and the lowest level in almost three years. Its median sale price was US$397,633, up 2% on the year.

NAR's figures run a month behind. A HousingWire column of 2 October, citing NAR, noted that existing-home sales fell 2% in August to an annualised 3.98 million, and that the median existing-home price had risen for a 38th consecutive month.

What the sources agree on is the direction. All three listing firms report fewer pending sales than a year ago and a sizeable share of sellers cutting their price, and Zillow and Realtor.com both report more homes for sale. They differ on how far: Zillow's 8.5% fall in newly pending sales is about twice the 4.1% decline that Realtor.com reported for the same month.

What comes next

Zillow says its next monthly report, covering October, is expected on 5 November. Three things in it will show whether September was a blip or the start of a longer slowdown.

The first is the sales nowcast. September's figure of 319,346 is preliminary, so the October release is the place to see whether it has been revised, and whether the 11.2% monthly drop in newly pending sales has fed through into closed sales, as Zillow's forecast of weaker fourth-quarter sales implies.

The second is the annual change in the home value index. At 1%, it leaves little room: the monthly fall recorded in September was half that size.

The third is the affordability share. At 34.3% of the median income, the typical mortgage payment was taking more in September than a month or a year before, and that figure depends on mortgage rates as much as on home values. Until the next release, September's report stands as Zillow's reading of a market where values have started to ease, deals are harder to agree, and the monthly cost of buying is still rising.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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