Even if I were inclined to positive spin — and I’m obviously not — I’d be hard pressed to put lipstick on the pig that was Thursday’s pending US home sales headline.

Contract signings across America’s hopelessly distorted housing market fell 5.5% in July, according to the NAR. That doesn’t sound all that bad until you consider that consensus expected a gain.

The decline pushed the index to yet another new record low.

Suffice to say the uptick seen in June was a false dawn. Another one. Contract signings fell in every region.

Even the NAR’s typically upbeat chief economist had a hard time locating a silver lining. “A sales recovery did not occur in midsummer,” Lawrence Yun said flatly. “The positive impact of job growth and higher inventory could not overcome affordability challenges.”

And there you have it. The combination of inexorable price increases and six-handle mortgage rates is just too much. No matter how badly sidelined buyers want to take the plunge, they’re either unwilling (and frankly I don’t blame them at this point) or unable.

Of course, the NAR’s data is backward-looking. And mortgage rates are down four weeks running. I’d suggest contract signings probably recovered smartly in August except that Redfin on Thursday said its measure of pending home sales dropped almost 7% in the four weeks to August 25. That was the biggest annual decrease in a year.

Apparently, the outsized decline in mortgage rates — which pushed financing costs to the lowest since April of 2023 last week — wasn’t enough. Buyers look to be disengaging.

Note that thanks to the decline in rates, the median monthly housing payment is actually at a six-month low, according to Redfin. But down payments are at record highs, just shy of $70,000 as prices continue to summit new peaks.

“Even though monthly payments are declining, home-sale prices are just a few thousand dollars shy of early July’s record high,” Dana Anderson said, noting that the upswing in inventory is “losing momentum.”

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that this is just a market like any other. There’s a threshold beyond which demand will dry up. Yes, these are homes. Which means there will always be a lot of people who’d like to buy, and indeed a lot of people who’re (more than) willing to stretch their budgets in order to make it “work.” But there’s a point beyond which people don’t have the wherewithal. That simple observation seems almost totally lost on housing market aficionados during some weeks.