New Home Sales Drop 0.6 Percent In September As Stagnation Continues

Ignoring the Covid rebound, new home sales have gone nowhere for a decade.

New Residential Construction Report

The New Residential Construction Report for September 2026 remains a meandering to nowhere broken record.

New Home Sales

New Home Sales Sales of new single-family houses in September 2026 were at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 676,000.
This is 0.6 percent (±13.8 percent) below the August 2026 rate of 680,000, and is 5.3 percent (±12.5 percent) below the September 2025 rate of 714,000.

For Sale Inventory and Months’ Supply

The seasonally-adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of September 2026 was 476,000. This is 1.0 percent (±0.9 percent) below the August 2026 estimate of 481,000, and is 2.3 percent (±4.0 percent) below the September 2025 estimate of 487,000.
This represents a supply of 8.4 months at the current sales rate. The months’ supply is 1.2 percent (±14.7 percent) below the August 2026 estimate of 8.5 months, and is 2.4 percent (±14.1 percent) above the September 2025 estimate of 8.2 months.

Sales Price

The median sales price of new houses sold in September 2026 was $400,400. This is 3.9 percent (±6.2 percent) above the August 2026 price of $385,400, and is 3.9 percent (±8.9 percent)* below the September 2025 price of $416,800.
The average sales price of new houses sold in September 2026 was $472,800. This is 0.4 percent (±6.1 percent) above the August 2026 price of $470,800, and is 6.7 percent (±6.6 percent) below the September 2025 price of $506,800.

Note the huge margins of error on these stats ±13.8 percentage points on monthly sales.

The Census Department does not have a lot of faith in these monthly numbers and neither do I.

However, the trends are easy to spot and that’s what matters more than any single report.

New Home Sales Annualized vs Homes for Sale Detail

Supply of new homes for sale has generally been rising. Actual sales have generally been falling.

Both measures appear to have stabilized but the number of new homes for sale is historically elevated.

New Homes For Sale by Stage of Construction

Stage of Construction Details

For Sale: 476,000
Not Started: 115,000
Under Construction: 250,000
Completed: 111,000
Under Construction Plus Completed: 361,000

Builder Reluctance

A new trend is underway since February-March 2025.

The number of homes under construction has fallen from 292,000 to 250,000 while the number of vacant but buildable lots has risen to 115,000.

Meanwhile, builders are scrambling to sell completed homes, down from 128,000 to 111,000.

Few want to take risks in this nasty housing environment with labor shortages due to deportations, rising materials costs due to tariff policies and the war, and rising interest rates.

Counting Vacant Lots

Counting vacant lots as a home for sale strikes me as silly. But the Census Department includes not started homes in its measures of supply.

The important numbers are completed and started plus completed. Those homes represent builder commitments and carrying costs.

To sell these homes, builders are under pressure to lower prices, offer financing, or other incentives. And they are not starting new ones.

New Homes for Sale Supply in Months

Supply in Months Detail

All Supply: 8.4 Months
Under Construction or Finished: 6.4 percent
Finished: 2.0 percent

All of these numbers are historically elevated but builders have been scrambling to dump their inventory of completed homes.

New Home Sales vs Existing Home Sales

One Word – Stagnant

Monthly reports are noise.

New and existing homes have both been stagnant since January 2023.

This is despite significant interest rate moves in both directions.

30-Year Mortgage Rates

Mortgage News Daily 30-Year Mortgage Rates

Rates courtesy of Mortgage News Daily.

The average MND rate is 7.33 percent the same as a month ago but down from 7.61 percent on October 5.

That’s last month’s chart. Nothing significant has changed.

Pool of Price Insensitive Buyers

Taken together, the preceding two charts tell a story of price insensitive buyers.

This pool includes all cash buyers, those with huge stock market gains who are unconstrained by affordability measures, those with significant home equity who want to trade down, and speculators who believe the stock market or the Fed will bail them out.

Everyone else has been priced out of the market by a price-mortgage rate combination that is just too high.

Few existing-home owners want to trade a 3 percent mortgage rate for one again well above 7 percent.