Contract signings just fell to the lowest level ever recorded. The National Association of REALTORS Pending Home Sales Index dropped 7.3 percent in September to 66.0, the lowest reading since the index began in 2001. Down 11.3 percent from a year ago, and it fell in all four regions of the country.
Read that again. Not the lowest in a few years. The lowest since they started keeping score.
So what do you do with that number? You could panic. You could wait for rates to save you. Or you could understand exactly what it means for your pipeline and get to work on the part you control.
What Pending Home Sales Actually Measure
Pending home sales count contracts signed on existing homes. They are not closings. They are the promise of closings, one to two months out. When signings fall off a cliff in September, closings feel it in November and December.
That is why this number matters more than the headlines about prices. Prices tell you what happened. Pending sales tell you what is coming.
And here is the part most agents miss. Existing-home sales actually rose 1.5 percent in September, to a 3.99 million annual pace, according to the same NAR report. So how can closings rise while signings hit a record low? Because September closings were contracts signed in July and August, when rates were lower. The pipeline is a lagging indicator. The record low you are reading about now is the closing slump you will feel at the end of the year.
Your November and December are already written in September's numbers. The question is what you do about January.
The Cause Is the Payment, Not the Price
Nobody is confused about why buyers stopped signing. The 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 7.18 percent in Freddie Mac's survey for the week of November 5. That is the third straight weekly decline, down from 7.40 percent in mid-October. It sounds like relief until you look at where it started.
The same survey put the 30-year average at 5.98 percent in late February. In eight months, the rate on a typical loan climbed nearly a point and a half, and it has stayed above 7 percent since the last week of September.
Here is what that climb did to a real payment. On a $350,000 loan, principal and interest at 7.18 percent runs about $2,371 a month. At the February rate of 5.98 percent, the same loan ran about $2,094. That is roughly $277 a month, every month. Your buyers did not get scared. They did the math, and the math told them to wait.
The Mortgage Bankers Association expects rates to sit near 7.3 percent for the rest of 2026 and stay above 7 percent through 2027. So stop waiting for the rate to fix your business. The rate is not coming to save you. The agents who survive this stretch are the ones who build a business that works at 7 percent.
What This Number Is Not
A record low in signings is not a crash. Say it out loud before you repeat the headline to a client.
The median existing-home price hit $417,500 in September, up 1.3 percent from a year earlier. That is the 39th consecutive month of annual price growth. Inventory climbed to 1.60 million homes, up 4.6 percent from last year, and that works out to a 4.8-month supply at the current sales pace. More choice, yes. A flood of distressed sellers, no.
NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun has now cut his 2026 forecast twice. Last November he called for existing-home sales to jump 14 percent this year. In April he cut that to 4 percent. Now, per Realtor.com's reporting, he expects sales and prices to grow 2 percent or less, and he expects new-home sales to fall 5 percent from a year ago.
That is a slow market, not a broken one. Homes are still selling. Prices are still inching up. The buyers who are signing are the ones who need to move, not the ones who want to. Your job is to find them first.
The Gap in Your Pipeline Is Already There
Here is the honest part. If your pipeline was thin in September, your closings in November and December will be thinner. That is arithmetic, not pessimism.
Most agents feel a slow month and blame the market. Then they spend the slow month doing nothing, which guarantees the next month is slow too. The agents who close three a month in January are the ones who treat November like a prospecting month, not a waiting month.
Your pipeline has three sources, and right now two of them matter more than ever. Listings, because 80 percent of sellers contact only one agent before they hire one, and a signed listing creates buyer conversations, open house traffic, and sphere activity all at once. And your sphere, because 43 percent of buyers found their agent through a referral from a friend, neighbor, or relative. Twenty real conversations beat two hundred cold calls, especially when the cold calls are going to people who are doing the same math your buyers are doing.
The third source is the one you already paid for: the leads from the last 90 days who never got a second call. Call them back. Some of them are ready now, and they will sign with the agent who called.
Three Moves for a Record Low Market
First, take listings. In a market where buyers are cautious, listings are the lever. Every listing is a reason to talk to your sphere, a reason to hold an open house, and a reason for a buyer to call you instead of the agent down the street. The agent who prices honestly right now earns the trust that turns into the next deal.
Second, work your 20. Twenty contacts, real conversations, one question each. Who do you know thinking about a move? That is it. No script, no pitch. In a slow market, the agents with a warm book win, because strangers are the first to freeze. Your past clients and your sphere are the only pipeline that does not depend on a stranger deciding today is the day.
Third, lead with the payment. Your buyers already did the math before they called you. Walk in knowing the monthly number, the buydown options, and the seller concessions their lender can structure. Do not promise a rate you cannot deliver. Show them the range and the levers, and let them pick the payment they can live with. The agent who talks about the payment before the buyer has to bring it up is the agent who gets the signature.
The Market Rewards the Agent Who Works the Gap
A record low in pending sales is a warning and an opening at the same time. It warns you that November and December closings will be thin across the industry. It opens a door for the agent who prospect while everyone else waits, because the competition just got quieter.
The market is not going to get easier in the next 60 days. Rates are expected to stay above 7 percent through 2027. Prices are not falling. The buyers who need to move are still moving, and they are signing with the agent who called them, priced the home honestly, and showed them the payment before they had to ask.
So stop watching the index. Work the gap it just showed you.
Power Unit Coaching builds systems like this for brokerages and agents who want production they can measure instead of hustle they can feel. If your closings come in bunches or not at all, it is time to build the pipeline that produces on purpose, in any market.
