Austin Real Estate Market Update September 22, 2026 | Daily Briefing

Compared with this point last fall, the Austin fall home sales slowdown is arriving faster than the calendar alone would explain. There are 3,844 homes under contract today, 5.8 percent fewer than the 4,081 at the same point in 2025, even though 0.7 percent more homes went under contract from January through September than a year ago.

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Those two numbers are not in conflict, because they measure different things. The year to date figure of 34,905 contracts is a running total of every home that went pending since January, and a strong spring carries it. The count of homes under contract right now is a snapshot of buyers who were active in the last several weeks. For a homeowner deciding whether to list this fall or hold for spring, the snapshot is the more useful number, because it describes the buyers who would actually see the listing. That snapshot has slipped below last year.

The most likely reason is the cost of money. Freddie Mac reported that the 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.95 percent as of September 17, up from 6.76 percent the prior week and 6.26 percent a year earlier. The Washington Post noted that reading was a 19-month high, and coverage from CNN and Mortgage Professional America counted it as the fourth straight weekly increase. Buyers responded. The Mortgage Bankers Association found purchase applications ran 19 percent below the same week a year earlier, reversing modest gains from recent weeks, though a Labor Day adjustment distorted that week. With no Federal Reserve meeting scheduled until late October, the Fed calendar offers no near-term relief.

The Austin real estate picture fits the national one. The National Association of Realtors reported that pending home sales rose 0.3 percent from July to August but fell 4.7 percent from a year earlier. Regionally, the South posted the smallest annual decline at 3.8 percent. NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun attributed the sluggishness to higher mortgage rates offsetting the buying power that job and income gains created.

Locally, Unlock MLS reported that metro pending sales rose 1.5 percent in August to 2,623, which reads the opposite direction from this report's 5.8 percent decline. The difference is method rather than contradiction. Unlock counts contracts written during August across its five county metro, while this briefing counts every listing sitting in pending status as of this morning across a 30 city footprint that reaches Burnet County markets such as Marble Falls and Burnet. One measures August's flow. The other measures today's stock, which captures September's rate jump in a way August's figures could not. Unlock's split is also telling: Williamson County pending sales climbed 9.3 percent to 960, while the city of Austin's pending sales fell 9.2 percent to 814.

The Activity Index, which is the share of all listings that are under contract, confirms that both sides of the ledger moved against sellers. It stands at 18.2 percent today against 19.5 percent a year ago, because pendings fell while active listings rose 2.05 percent to 17,233. Both readings sit in the 15 to 20 percent band this report labels Contraction, where supply outruns demand and prices tend to give.

The split beneath that index matters. New construction runs at 24.91 percent while resale runs at 15.48 percent, a resale reading barely above the 15 percent line where the scale turns to freeze. Builders hold 1,536 of the 3,844 contracts, about 40 percent by derived arithmetic, from 4,631 of the 17,233 listings, about 27 percent. That gap does not mean new homes are better. A builder can pay for a rate buydown or closing credits out of profit margin, and with rates near 7 percent that tool is worth more to buyers than it was in spring. A resale seller competing against it has fewer levers, and price is the main one.

Closed sales tell the spring story, and they lag contracts by a month or two. Contracts written in spring became closings in summer, and closed sales beat the prior year every month from February through July, including gains of 15.3 percent in April and 12.8 percent in July. Year to date closings total 24,855, up 6.3 percent.

August broke that six month streak with 2,724 closings, 1.1 percent below August 2025, but that figure is provisional. August fell 9.7 percent from July, when the same move was a gain of 3.0 percent in 2025 and a dip of 1.7 percent in 2024, so late reporting will likely push it higher. Unlock MLS counted 2,501 metro sales in August, down 7.3 percent on its own footprint, which points the same direction. So the softening is probably real even if its size is not settled.

Two lagging efficiency measures stalled in the same month. Absorption, the share of listings that sold, was 17.5 percent in August against 17.6 percent a year earlier, after five straight months ahead of 2025, and well below its historical average of 31.22 percent. The August Market Flow Score matched last year exactly at 5.66, against a historical average of 6.55. None of that describes a turn in the market. A spring trend improved for several months and has now paused.

Some slowing happens every fall, and the long record helps separate the season from the signal. Since 2000, Austin has averaged 2,746 closings in August, 2,356 in September, 1,978 in November and 1,522 in January, before climbing back to 2,394 in March. By derived arithmetic, the typical September runs about 14 percent below August, and sellers should expect that. What this year adds is a contract count already behind last year before the seasonal decline has fully arrived, while rates have climbed four weeks running.

Consider a seller in the $500,000 to $600,000 range. That tier holds 1,634 listings against 351 contracts, an Activity Index of 17.7 percent. Of its listings, 60.22 percent have cut price at least once, with a median cut of $30,000, or 5.32 percent. Median days on market for those active listings is 77, which measures homes still waiting rather than completed sales.

On a $550,000 home with 20 percent down, principal and interest comes to about $2,913 a month at 6.95 percent, against about $2,712 at last year's 6.26 percent. That is a derived gap of roughly $200. The tier's median $30,000 cut takes about $159 back off the payment, also derived, so the typical cut now covers about four fifths of what rates added. That is the math the buyer brings to the showing.

For sellers, the decision is less about fall versus spring and more about whether the list price reflects that math. Sellers who meet the market are still getting close to their final list price: August's sold to list ratio was 97.25 percent, above 96.80 percent a year earlier. But 55.7 percent of all active listings have already taken at least one cut, and the ones that started high paid for it in time. Waiting for spring trades today's thinner buyer pool for a busier season at an unknown rate. The next markers are the Fed's late October meeting and NAR's September pending home sales report, scheduled for October 20.

Buyers should read the same numbers as leverage: more listings, fewer competing contracts, and sellers already cutting. Agents should treat the pending count and the Activity Index as the leading pair to watch, since closings, absorption and the Market Flow Score will confirm any shift only weeks later. Investors should note that 2026 volume remains ahead of 2025 even as the fall pace weakens, which keeps the Austin housing forecast one of a slow market rather than a stalled one. For the Austin market update each morning, visit the Austin Daily Real Estate Briefing hub at teamprice.com/austin-daily-real-estate-briefing for the complete archive of daily market data. The Austin fall home sales slowdown is real in the contract count, provisional in the closing count, and still inside the range a well priced listing can handle.