Two numbers came out this week that you’ll see covered very differently depending on where you read them. NAR’s pending home sales index for September came in at 66.0, down 11.3% from a year ago. And the Case-Shiller index for August showed Dallas home prices in slightly negative territory year-over-year, at -0.79%.
That’s real data and it deserves a straight read.
What gets less attention is the counterweight. NAR’s Q3 metro report, released October 29, shows the national median single-family price at $432,900, up 1.7% year-over-year. Prices rose in 78% of U.S. metros. So pending sales are falling and prices are still rising nationally. That’s not a contradiction. It makes sense once you understand what’s driving it.
What the Numbers Are Actually Saying
Pending sales measure contract activity. When that number falls 11% year-over-year, fewer buyers are signing contracts. That’s demand softening, not a market in collapse.
The price data tells a different story because it measures something different. Quarterly median prices of closed sales lag contracts by 30 to 60 days and shift with what’s actually selling. If the sellers who do sell hold firm on price, the median stays up even with fewer transactions. That’s the national picture right now.
Dallas is a different story at the moment. Case-Shiller shows DFW at -0.79% year-over-year as of August, one of the larger negative readings in the country alongside Seattle and Las Vegas. For buyers and sellers in the DFW market, that’s worth understanding rather than ignoring.
Builder Pressure Is Real, and I’ve Seen It from Both Sides
I spent 37 years in mortgage and commercial lending, including lending to homebuilders. When new home inventory piles up and pending sales soften, builders don’t sit on that product. They can’t. Construction loans have maturity dates, and lenders watch sell-through closely. When inventory builds too much, builders get aggressive on pricing, rate buydowns, and incentive packages to move homes and protect that lending relationship.
That’s not pessimism about builders. It’s how the business works. Right now, with new home supply elevated and purchase activity softer nationally, that pressure is real. Recent data shows 66% of builders using incentives and 38% cutting prices.
The resale market operates differently. A homeowner selling doesn’t have a construction loan due date forcing their hand. But the pressure to stand out is the same. Sellers who want to move in this environment are offering concessions, buying down rates, and pricing more realistically than they were two years ago.
Either way, that’s a win for buyers, as long as they can accept where rates are today.
Rates Are Still the Variable That Matters Most
Here’s where it gets complicated for Texas buyers specifically.
Dallas prices down less than 1% year-over-year sounds like relief. And it is, to a point. But the Freddie Mac 30-year fixed rate was at 7.24% at the end of October. A year ago it was closer to 6.3%. On a typical purchase in that price range, that rate difference adds roughly $200 or more to your monthly payment compared to a year ago, even with prices flat or slightly lower.
Layer Texas property taxes on top of that, which run high in most DFW counties, along with homeowners insurance costs that have climbed across the state, and the monthly number on a home bought today can easily be higher than it would have been a year ago despite the softening you see in the headline price.
The price is not the payment. Those are two different numbers.
NAR put the principal and interest payment on an existing single-family home with 20% down at $2,251 as of Q3, up $69 from a year earlier. For a starter home around $368,000 with 10% down, it’s $2,208 per month in P&I alone. That figure takes roughly 36% of a first-time buyer’s income, and it doesn’t include property taxes, homeowners insurance, or PMI. In Texas, where property taxes run well above average in most DFW counties, the actual total monthly payment on the same home is significantly higher. That’s the number that matters for your budget, not the stripped-down P&I figure.
Fear Is Keeping More Buyers Sidelined Than the Math Justifies
Higher rates don’t just affect what you can afford. They affect the perception of affordability, and those two things are not always the same.
When the news covers pending sales down 11% and local prices going negative, a lot of buyers hear that as a signal to wait. Wait for prices to come down more. Wait for rates to drop. Wait until things settle. The problem is that “things settling down” in this environment could mean rates moving higher before they move lower. The Fed held at its October 28 meeting, but two members voted for a hike, and December odds are running near 85% according to CME FedWatch.
Waiting for a better market while rates drift higher is not a neutral decision. It has a cost.
What I’ve seen over 37 years is that buyers who make decisions based on actual payment numbers rather than headlines generally do better. Not because the market is always favorable, but because they’re making a real decision instead of reacting to noise.
Run the Numbers Before Fear Makes the Decision for You
The Total Mortgage Payment and Cash to Close Calculator lets you plug in a real purchase price, your down payment, loan type, and county, and see what the full monthly payment looks like including property taxes and homeowners insurance, not just principal and interest.
More useful right now: run the same purchase price at 7.24%, then add 25 basis points, then add 50. See what a potential December Fed move does to your monthly number. That’s the information you need to decide whether to move now or wait, and it takes about two minutes.
You can also use the Rent vs. Buy Calculator to compare your current housing cost against what a purchase would look like. For a lot of buyers across the country, the gap is not as wide as the news cycle suggests.
If you want to understand what goes into these estimates and how close they run to real lender quotes, the accuracy case study on this site compares the calculator output against two actual lender quotes side by side. Worth reading before you use any mortgage tool online.
The Bottom Line
Demand is softening. Dallas prices are slightly negative year-over-year. National prices are still up 1.7%. Both things are true at the same time, and that’s not unusual in a market that’s shifting.
What’s also true: buyers in this market have more leverage than they’ve had in several years. Builders and resale sellers are both under pressure to deal. The biggest obstacle keeping most buyers sidelined is the fear of the payment, not the payment itself.
Run the numbers. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, you’ll know that too, and you’ll have made a real decision rather than a default one.
Don Proctor has 37 years of experience in commercial banking, mortgage lending, and credit analysis. Your Mortgage Toolbox was built from that background to give buyers accurate, state-specific payment estimates before they sit down with a lender.