US existing-home sales fell 1.7% month-over-month in July, according to the National Association of Realtors, as record prices and elevated mortgage rates continued to squeeze would-be buyers out of the market even as sales still rose 0.7% from a year earlier.
The median US sales price hit an unprecedented level for the month of July, climbing 2% year-over-year to $434,100, according to NAR's own release. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 6.54% in July per Freddie Mac, up from 6.49% in June, before climbing further to 6.69% the following week, its highest level in just over a year. Unsold inventory came in at 1.54 million homes at month's end, down 1.9% from June and 0.6% below July of last year.
A Regionally Uneven Slowdown
The month-over-month decline wasn't uniform: sales rose in the Northeast, held steady in the West, and fell in the Midwest and South. On a year-over-year basis, the pattern flipped somewhat, with sales up in the Midwest and West and flat in the Northeast and South, underscoring how differently regional housing markets are responding to the same national rate environment depending on local inventory and price levels.
NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun described the market as \u201cremarkably stable, even amid the rising mortgage rate environment of the past few months,\u201d while noting that \u201cthe housing market would be thriving if average mortgage rates were to return near 6%.\u201d That framing puts the roughly half-point gap between current rates and Yun's 6% threshold at the center of what's holding sales back, rather than any collapse in underlying buyer demand.
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With inventory still historically tight and prices still climbing even as sales soften, the July data points to a housing market that is cooling at the margins without breaking, a dynamic likely to keep both buyers and the Federal Reserve watching mortgage rates closely heading into the fall.
