They bought some new homes last month.

I don’t know for the life of me who “they” were, because as far as anyone can tell, the reservoir of would-be US homebuyers with great credit, a six-figure downpayment and a six-figure annual income (the boxes you need to check to afford the median-priced home in America) ran dry about three years ago.

Although the pace of new home sales decelerated in September, the slowdown was only marginal, surprising consensus which (rationally) expected an outsized decline given last month’s steep increase in financing costs.

As the figure shows, the 0.6% MoM decline compared very favorably with the expected 5% decline. The pace, 676,000, was respectable under the circumstances.

Homebuilder sentiment, you’re reminded, is absolutely abysmal, where that means the NAHB headline’s only been worse in the aftermath of the GFC and during the 1990-1991 recession. That’s showing up in sluggish new construction. At just 859,000, the seasonally adjusted annual rate for single-family housing starts in September was the second worst since March of 2023.

The read-across for those in a position to buy is that concessions are available, including chunky rate buy-downs. Although the most aggressive such offers tend to be for new homes you wouldn’t want (i.e., cheaply-built starter homes in cookie cutter neighborhoods), I’ve seen some fairly attractive offers from local builders who produce a decent product. Just yesterday, a builder in Louisville offered me $10,000 on a pretty decent, four-bed, four-bath, all-brick new build. Not that I’d want to live in the Louisville suburbs, but you get the point.

The median sale price for new construction last month was $400,400, according to the government release. That was actually a four-month high, but it’s well below the 2022 peak north of $460,000.

As the figure shows, the trend in median prices is subtly lower. YoY declines are far more prevalent than gains, and September’s near 4% decline versus the same month last year was the second-largest in 11 months.

Speaking of prices, Tuesday’s update on the Case-Shiller gauges (so, prices for existing homes) found the 20-city index posting its most pronounced YoY increase since May of 2025.

The 2.7% gain for August (remember, the Case-Shiller data comes on a two-month delay) helped close the gap further between home price appreciation and headline inflation.

There’s the updated chart. Home price growth’s undershot all-items price growth for 15 months running, but the spread in August was less than 0.8%.

As quick aside, that gap was meaningfully wider using the broader, national home price index, where the YoY price gain was a cooler 2.1% in August.

“Affordability remains challenging,” Rebecca Kaufman, Associate Director of Commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said Tuesday. With inflation running a point and a half above the Fed’s target, Brent in the triple-digits and mortgage rates up sharply, “households continue to face elevated costs alongside persistently high home prices,” she added.