New: 🧠 Market Minds Issue #148

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U.S. homebuyers still in the market have more choices and less competition as pending sales fall to their lowest level in nearly three years. The catch is doing considerable work: buyers first have to afford the mortgage.

Redfin’s data for the four weeks ending September 13, 2026, show seasonally adjusted pending sales dropped 3.5% from the previous week and 5.4% from a year earlier. Sellers outnumber buyers by hundreds of thousands.

That gives remaining shoppers something a hectic market rarely allows: time to consider a house, question its price and negotiate rather than rush.

The median sale price reached $397,633, up 2% year over year—roughly the same modest growth seen in recent months. Demand has weakened without producing a broad national price retreat.

Borrowing costs help explain the squeeze. Freddie Mac’s weekly average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.76% for the week ending September 10, up from 6.35% a year earlier. The median monthly mortgage payment was $2,633, a 3.4% annual increase.

Less competition, then, partly reflects exclusion. Some would-be buyers are absent because the payment does not work.

New listings were up 1.5% year over year despite a slight weekly decline. Housing supply stood at 4.1 months, within the four-to-five-month range considered balanced. This is more breathing room—not an unqualified buyer’s market.

Sellers show some willingness to bend: 20.8% of listings had price cuts, compared with 19.7% a year earlier. The typical home sold after 46 days on the market, unchanged from last year.

But a quarter of completed sales still fetched more than the asking price. Buyers have leverage; they do not have it over every property.

Local conditions also complicate the national picture. Median prices rose 10.2% in San Francisco while falling 5% in San Jose. 

Portland Redfin Premier agent Meme Loggins argues that buyers who can afford today’s costs should use the slower market. She expects inventory to disappear quickly and bidding wars to return if mortgage rates fall below 6%.

That is an agent’s forecast, not a guaranteed threshold. Still, it exposes the tension in waiting for cheaper financing: the rate that makes a home affordable for one buyer may bring several competitors back through the door.

In 2024, artificial intelligence had a place in real estate brokerages, but its role was largely confined to content creation and digital marketing. According to Delta Media Group CEO Michael Minard, those were the primary uses among brokerages and agents at the time: visible applications, rather than tools shaping the whole operation.

Leaders’ assessments reflected that position. Asked to rate AI’s current importance on a scale of one to 10, respondents to Delta’s survey gave it an average score of 5.45. They expected more from it in the near future, assigning that a 7.02.

AI’s anticipated value was running ahead of its importance to the business at hand.

The current-importance score edged up to 5.9 in 2025. Then the pace changed. In 2026, it reached 7.12—31% above its 2024 level and slightly higher than the near-future rating leaders had given two years earlier.

Near-future expectations rose too, reaching 8.25. But the sharper development was in the present: leaders increasingly viewed AI as important now, and not simply as something to prepare for.

The latest survey covered roughly 100 brokerage leaders, offering a snapshot of changing priorities rather than a measure of adoption across the entire industry.

The intended uses were also broadening. Between 2024 and 2026, the share of leaders using or planning to use AI for front-office or administrative support more than doubled, from 23% to 53%.

By 2026, more than half also intended to deploy AI for workflow and back-office automation, as well as agent recruiting, training and performance coaching. Just under half wanted to expand its use for predictive analytics, market analysis and property valuations. The emphasis was moving beyond producing marketing material toward organizing work and informing decisions.

Confidence in AI’s business value has not displaced concern. Both increased in the latest survey.

One possible reason is the next step leaders are considering: tools that operate without human intervention. Half of respondents planned to adopt or expand their use of agentic AI during 2026, particularly for business intelligence, forecasting and contract review.

Those remain plans, not evidence of completed deployment. Still, they indicate how far the intended role has widened since 2024.

As Minard put it, AI is moving “from the edges of the brokerage toward the center.” The latest findings leave brokerages approaching that center with greater ambition—and greater anxiety about what happens when the technology works more independently.

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The typical U.S. renter paid $1,948 a month in August 2026. A typical new homebuyer faced $3,014 in mortgage payments, taxes and insurance—a $1,066 monthly difference, according to Zillow’s August rent report.

That cash-flow advantage extended across all 50 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. But cheaper than buying does not necessarily mean cheap: national rents were still 38.5% above their pre-pandemic level.

The comparison also depends on specific buying conditions. Zillow assumes a typical home purchased with 10% down and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.67%. These are estimated costs for a new buyer, not the payments of homeowners who secured lower rates years ago.

In Pittsburgh, typical rent was $1,469, compared with a $2,005 monthly buyer payment—a $536 difference. In San Jose, rent was $3,815 against an $11,698 buyer payment, leaving renters with a potential $7,883 monthly advantage.

That amounts to $6,432 a year in Pittsburgh and $94,596 in San Jose. The direction is identical; the financial scale is not.

The national gap has also widened. Over six months, typical buyer costs rose $140 a month, while rents increased $32. Renting has become more favorable in this comparison largely because buying costs have climbed faster, not because rents have broadly fallen.

The income thresholds reflect that divide: affording the typical rental required $77,919 annually, versus more than $120,500 for the typical buyer payment under Zillow’s assumptions.

A renter who can consistently invest the national monthly difference would set aside $12,792 in a year. Using a 4.68% return benchmark—the August 10-year Treasury yield—Zillow estimates an additional $322 in first-year earnings.

Over five years, the projected balance reaches roughly $72,000, including $8,041 in investment earnings. That calculation assumes rent and buying costs remain stable and the renter invests the difference rather than spends it. 

The buyer payment, meanwhile, excludes additional ownership expenses such as closing costs and maintenance.

Across most of the country, Zillow’s analysis generally favors renting for households expecting to stay five years or less. Yet today’s gap need not persist: softness in the for-sale market and slower additions to apartment supply could narrow it.

Renters retain greater freedom to move; buyers with fixed-rate mortgages gain more predictable loan payments. One advantage is immediately visible in the monthly budget. The other matters more as the years accumulate. 

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Buyers have more room to negotiate as pending home sales hit a nearly three-year low, but affordability remains the bigger constraint: mortgage rates are near 6.8%, prices are still rising modestly, and the typical monthly payment has climbed to $2,633. AI is becoming a more central part of brokerage operations, with leaders increasingly looking beyond marketing toward administration, workflow automation, recruiting, analytics and even agentic systems that can act with less human intervention. Renting remains far cheaper than buying in every major U.S. metro: the typical renter paid $1,948 in August versus $3,014 for a new buyer. That $1,066 monthly gap can create a meaningful financial advantage for renters who invest the difference, although the comparison shifts with location, time horizon and future housing costs.

Have a great weekend - we’ll see you next Saturday.

Cheers 🍻

-Market Minds Team

The content of Market Minds is provided for informational purposes only and reflects personal opinions based on sources believed to be reliable. It does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or professional advice. Each reader is solely responsible for their own decisions.