The rate discount is gone. Sellers are cutting prices instead.

What the data actually says

Freddie Mac’s August 6 survey put the 30-year fixed mortgage at 6.69%, up from 6.66% a week earlier. That is the fifth consecutive weekly increase and a cumulative move of 26 basis points since the seven-week low of 6.43% on July 2. The 15-year fixed has crossed 6% as well, at 6.01%.

The number that matters most in that print is not 6.69% but 6.63% — the reading from a year ago. Every month of 2026 so far, buyers have been borrowing more cheaply than the buyers ahead of them. That cushion is now gone. On a median-priced home with 20% down, five weeks of increases work out to roughly $60 more per month, about $725 a year, or the equivalent of paying some $11,500 more for the same house.

Sellers have started to respond, which is the genuinely new development this month. The national median list price was $428,950 in July, down 2.4% from a year earlier and the ninth straight month of annual declines. Price per square foot is falling in 34 of the 50 largest metros. The share of listings carrying a price reduction climbed to 20.0% — within 0.6 points of last July, after running nearly two full points below year-ago levels through the spring.

Buyers have not walked away from that. Pending sales rose 1.3% year over year in July, an eighth consecutive monthly gain and the longest such run since June 2021. Homes went under contract in a median 57 days — four days slower than June, but one day faster than last July, the first annual improvement in 26 months. Realtor.com’s chief economist described it as a market cooling seasonally rather than coming apart.

The supply picture is the caveat. Active listings reached 1,126,252, up 2.1% both from June and from a year ago — but new listings fell 8.6% from June and, for the first time in 2026, failed to exceed the prior year’s level. Some sellers are choosing not to compete. NAR’s most recent read, covering June, had inventory at 1.56 million homes and 4.6 months of supply, unchanged from a year earlier; its July figures land on August 11. Realtor.com’s senior economist has flagged this month as the real test: if reductions accelerate while pending sales weaken and sellers start pulling listings, that combination would be a genuine turn rather than a seasonal cooldown.

That national figure conceals the story. Condos and co-ops sit at 6.4 months of supply, the heaviest since 2012, and their median price of $380,000 now trails the single-family median of $446,400 by about 15%. Austin’s Travis County ran 6.1 months in July, with the typical home sitting more than two months and only 14% selling above asking. Texas statewide has actually stabilised — 5.3 months of supply and 64 average days on market, with inventory dipping below year-ago levels for the first time this cycle. Meanwhile the Northeast and Midwest posted list-price gains of 1.4% and 0.2%, against declines of 3.9% in the West and 2.5% in the South. National averages describe no one’s actual transaction.