Inventory Piled Up in October While New Listings Fell
Inventory Piled Up in October While New Listings Fell
Here is a strange pair of numbers from October, and if you are selling your own home you need to hold both of them in your head at once. Realtor.com released its October housing report on Wednesday, and it showed active listings topping 1.18 million homes for sale, up 7.4 percent from a year ago. At the same time, new listings fell 7.5 percent from last year to 357,000, down 9.5 percent from September alone. So there are more homes sitting on the market, and fewer fresh ones joining them. That split tells you almost everything about how to price right now.
Think about what that pile-up actually is. It is not a flood of new competition. It is yesterday's listings still sitting there. Homes under contract fell 10.5 percent from a year ago, the steepest annual drop since October 2023, and the median list price slipped 2.2 percent to $415,000. Buyers are not rushing in to clear the shelves. They are picking through what is already there, and passing over plenty of it. More than one in five active listings, 20.5 percent, had a price cut in October, the fourth month in a row above one in five and the highest October reading since 2022. I wrote about the same warning sign in September's price cuts, and October just confirmed it was not a one-month blip.
Sellers are digging in, not panicking
Before you read this as a crash signal, look at the other side of the report. Only about 4.4 percent of active listings were pulled off the market in October, down from 4.6 percent a year ago. Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel calls delistings a canary in the coal mine, and the canary is still singing. Sellers are not yanking their homes in a panic. They are sitting tight and waiting it out, even with mortgage rates averaging 7.33 percent in October, about 110 basis points above a year earlier.
I get that instinct, but sitting tight is exactly how a home becomes part of the pile-up. Every week your listing sits while fresher homes appear, buyers start to wonder what is wrong with it. Then comes the price cut, and then the next one, and by the time you reach a price buyers will pay, you have spent months carrying the house and you still look like the seller who had to be talked down. The sellers who cut early and cut once do better than the ones who cut late and cut twice.
What I would do if I were listing this week
First, price off what buyers are actually paying, not off what you hoped the house was worth last spring. Run your asking price through our mortgage calculator at today's rates and look at the monthly payment your buyer faces. If that number makes you wince, it will make them walk, and your home joins the 1.18 million.
Second, use the gap in fresh listings. New sellers pulled back hard in October, which means a well-priced home that lists now is not fighting a wave of shiny new competition. It is standing out against a lot of stale stock. That is a real opening, but only if your price is honest on day one. A fresh listing at a stale price is just tomorrow's price cut with better photos.
Third, get it live while buyers are still shopping before winter slows things further. Our pricing page shows what you keep when you sell it yourself, and every dollar you save on commission is a dollar you can use to meet a buyer on price without giving away your equity. The pile-up is a warning, not a verdict. Homes are selling. They are just selling when the price matches what a buyer at 7 percent-plus rates can actually pay. Price for that buyer, list while fresh supply is thin, and you are not part of the inventory problem. You are the home that stands out from it.
Source: Realtor.com, November 4, 2026; summarised in United States Real Estate Investor