20% of Homes See Price Cuts (Sellers Face Reality) | Oct. 2026 Housing Market Update

Dave Meyer (0:00)

I'm seeing a huge buying opportunity in the housing market right now. Home sellers are cutting their prices at a higher seasonal rate than we've seen in years. In the most recent set of data, more than 20% of properties on the market had a price cut in just the last four weeks. So what does that mean? It means sellers are finally getting realistic. They've accepted that they can't get 2020 prices anymore. And you can take advantage of that and start picking off premium properties at a discount. Buy below market price, collect the instant equity, and set up your portfolio for years to come. That's what I'm doing, and I'll explain all the data behind my thesis in this October BiggerPockets Housing Market Update.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm Dave Meyer, real estate investor, CIO at BiggerPockets and a housing market analyst. And today on the show, we are doing our October 2026 housing market update. As you all know, a lot is changing in the housing market all the time. I know I say that every month, but it is true. In the world we live in, in 2026, things are changing in the housing market more than they normally do. And so in today's episode, we're going to do the three things we always do, which is first look at market update. We're going to go through the data, what's happening with prices, with inventory, with mortgage rates and all that. Then I'm going to share an opportunity that I am seeing in the market that is supported by data and evidence that I think all of you should be paying attention to. And then third, we'll do what we always do, which is go through our risk report, because you can't turn on any media channel these days and not hear someone claiming that the housing market is going to crash or some economic disaster is coming. And since those things are always possible, it is worth spending some time talking about if it's coming. And we're going to have an honest conversation about what risks exist in the housing market and for real estate investors. So we'll talk about that at the end of the episode. So that's the plan. Let's get to it. We're going to start with our market update. We're going to go into prices first. That's what everyone always wants to know, is the big picture, what's going on with home prices. And surprisingly, or you might be shocked if you go on any news site these days, home prices are still up nominally, not inflation adjusted. The price you see on realtor, Redfin or whatever, that is up 2.5% year over year.

That's just about the historical average, just so you know, is about 2.5% appreciation per year. So from a price perspective, we are actually having, despite everything going on, we're having quite a normal year in terms of pricing in the housing market. If you look at Case Schiller, which is a great data set, you look at Redfin, you look at Zillow, they're all kind of in the same space. So no, we're not in a market crash at all. It is important to know, though, that the data that I'm talking about is what is called nominal. It's not inflation-adjusted, and that's what most people care about. That's what you see on your contract when you go and buy a house or you sell a house. But I do want to call out the important caveat that if you do inflation-adjust home prices right now, they are down. It is not keeping up with the pace of inflation. And as investors, that's normally what we want. We want our investments to keep up with the pace of inflation, and that's not happening from a price perspective right now. But I think the real story in the housing market is looking at some of the forward-looking stuff, the stuff that helps us predict what is going to happen in the next couple of months. So let's get into that. And for that, we really want to look at demand, and we want to look at supply. Like, what is happening with new listings and inventory?

And the story with new listings are that for the most of the data we have, it's flat. Like, if you look at the July data, the last couple of months of really good data that we have, it's actually flat. So the amount of people who are choosing to put their homes on the market, basically the same year over year. This is again, as of July. If you look at active listings, which is the number of homes for sale at any given point, that is also flat. And so if you look at sort of like the monthly data that we had in July, the last monthly data that we have, it looks pretty stable, right? Prices are up nominally. They're a little less than inflation. Pending sales, they're down a little. The listings are flat. Inventory is flat. Days on market is flat. The sale to list ratio is flat. So by and large, we have the same market today that we had a year ago. And that is happening even with higher mortgage rates.