You know, I've been watching the housing market data pretty closely, and what Realtor.com is showing us in July is a market that's basically holding steady despite some real headwinds. According to their research, asking prices continued their downward trend for the ninth month in a row, dropping about 2.4 percent compared to last year. What's interesting is that homes are actually selling faster than they were a year ago, and we're seeing pending sales continue to grow month after month. So on the surface it looks like things are cooling a bit, but it's not the kind of dramatic seller pullback we saw last summer.
The price cuts are starting to creep back up, which tells me we're moving toward more of a balanced market. After running below last year's levels through the spring, the share of listings with price reductions has nearly caught up to 2025's pace. What caught my eye is that some regions, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, are actually cutting prices more aggressively than they did a year ago. That suggests different regional dynamics are at play depending on where you are.
According to Realtor.com, the summer slowdown is pretty much happening on schedule. New listings have pulled back to where they were last year, which is typical seasonal behavior when the weather heats up. Pending sales are still growing, but the rate of growth has cooled considerably from earlier in the year. The real question everyone's asking is whether this is just normal seasonal adjustment or something more concerning for the rest of the year.
The timing of all this matters a lot. Realtor.com noted that when we had economic shocks earlier in the year, the spring buying season had momentum behind it. Now we're heading into typically the slower months of the year, and we're dealing with mortgage rates edging back up and oil prices spiking again. Their analysts are being careful not to overstate things, but they're clearly on what they call "housing market resilience watch" to see whether the market can hold up without that seasonal tailwind.
What I'm seeing locally here in the Bay Area and across the East Bay is that we need to pay close attention to what happens in August. According to Realtor.com's framework, we should be watching three things together: whether price cuts keep accelerating, whether pending sales start falling, and whether sellers start delisting properties in frustration. Right now, all three of those metrics are actually performing better than they did last year, so we haven't slipped into the kind of stagnant market we saw in 2025. But the price cuts are definitely creeping up, and that's something we can't ignore. For folks buying and selling here, this feels like a market that's gradually shifting toward buyers, but it's not a done deal yet.
