Market Action September 2026

The short version: September was the month buyers took their foot off the gas. Sellers kept listing at the same pace, but fewer people made offers, so homes are sitting longer and sellers are giving up more at the negotiating table. Prices haven't dropped, but the balance of power is shifting toward buyers.

Here's what changed from August to September.

Fewer buyers committed. Accepted offers fell 12.6%, from 2,013 to 1,760. This is the most important number in the report. Some slowdown is normal in September because kids go back to school and summer buyers are done. But this drop is steep. Last year, pending sales fell only about 6% from August to September, and in 2024 they actually rose slightly. Compared to September 2025, pending sales are down almost 18%. So this is more than a normal seasonal dip.

Sellers kept listing anyway. New listings rose 1.9%, from 2,440 to 2,487, which is basically flat. That's the problem for sellers: the same number of homes are coming on while fewer buyers are showing up. Active listings reached 7,411, the highest September count in at least three years.

Closings dropped, and October will likely drop too. Closed sales fell 7.9%, from 1,902 to 1,752. Closings trail offers by 30 to 45 days, so September's closings mostly reflect August contracts. Since September's offers fell off a cliff, expect October's closed sales to look weak as well.

The supply of homes is moving toward balanced. Inventory went from 3.8 to 4.2 months. That means if nothing new were listed, it would take about four months to sell everything on the market. Under three months favors sellers, and once you get to around five or six months, buyers have the upper hand. We're drifting from mild seller's market toward neutral. One caveat: that 4.2 figure includes proposed and under-construction homes. The move-in-ready number is 4.0, so the story is the same.

Homes are taking longer to sell. Average time on market jumped from 57 days to 68, an increase of 11 days in one month.

Sellers are giving up more off their asking price. In August, homes sold for about 0.5% below list. In September, the gap was about 1.3%. On a $550K house, that's roughly $7,000 below asking instead of $2,750. That's not a crash, but it's real negotiating room.

The headline "prices up 3.8%" is misleading. The average price jumped from $607,200 to $630,500, but the median only rose 0.9%, from $540,000 to $545,000. The median is the number that matters. The average got pulled up because more expensive, bigger homes happened to close this month. Sales between $1M and $1.2M nearly doubled compared to last September, and average square footage jumped to around 2,060. Price per square foot was flat at about $311. So homes didn't get more expensive. More big houses sold. If you see anyone posting "Portland prices up almost 4%!" off this report, they're wrong.

Condos softened. The condo median price slid below $300K in September after peaking around $335K in the spring, and condo inventory is near its highest point in three years. Condos are the weakest part of the market right now.

What this means for buyers in the $500–600K range: they have more homes to choose from, more time to decide, and more room to ask for concessions like seller-paid closing costs or a rate buydown. 

For sellers: pricing right from day one matters more now. Overpricing and waiting for an offer is how you end up at 90+ days with price cuts.

One honest caution: one month doesn't make a trend, and fall slowdowns are normal. But the gap between flat listings and sharply lower offers is the real signal here. If October's pending sales stay this low, this will look like the start of a genuine shift rather than seasonal noise.