Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slumped in October to their slowest pace in more than 16 years, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

Existing-home sales fell 5.5% from September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million, and were down 8.8% from October 2025. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said that was the lowest level since August 2010. Yahoo Finance noted the tally fell short of the 3.8 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet, and that October was the third straight month the annual pace stayed below 4 million. Home sales have mostly hovered near a 4 million annual pace since 2023, far short of a historic norm closer to 5.2 million, Yahoo reported.

"It was a punch in the gut," Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com, told NPR. "We expected to see a soft month but not the softest month since 2010." Yun put it more bluntly to Yahoo: "It is just a tough market for buyers and sellers."

Rates, prices and a thinner West

Yun said 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, said the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.33% in October, up from 6.86% in September and 6.25% a year earlier. NPR and Yahoo said the average rate hit as high as 7.40% in October, the highest since 2023 or, in Yahoo's phrasing, the highest in nearly three years. Those figures describe a monthly average and an intra-month peak; they should not be treated as the same number.

Even as sales fell, prices kept rising, though more slowly. The median existing-home price was $416,700, up 0.4% from $414,900 a year earlier, the 40th consecutive month of year-over-year gains. Yahoo, citing NAR, said that was an all-time high for the month of October in data going back to 1999. Unsold inventory rose 1.3% from September to 1.59 million units, a 5.1-month supply, up from 4.7 months in September and 4.4 months a year earlier. The median time on market was 35 days. First-time buyers accounted for 29% of sales, cash sales 29%, and distressed sales remained 2%.

The West, which includes California, had the sharpest drop: sales fell 9.7% from September to an annual rate of 650,000 and were down 14.5% from a year earlier. The median price in the West was $624,300, unchanged from October 2025. Sales also fell month-over-month in the Midwest and South and were unchanged in the Northeast; all four regions were down year-over-year. NAR's Housing Affordability Index fell to 100.7 from 107.3 a year earlier, with the West down 5.2%.

Yahoo said the slump dates to 2022, when rates rose from pandemic-era lows, and that sales were essentially flat last year at a 30-year low. Yun expects 2026 sales will likely end up lower than 2025. The report tied this year's rate spike in part to higher bond yields after the U.S.-Iran war began in late February. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate in September, held it steady last month, and has signaled another possible hike in December, NPR and Yahoo reported. "There could be sizable pent-up demand if mortgage rates decline," Yun said, given "consistent job growth" and "sizable housing wealth" among the country's 88 million homeowners.