US Home Sales Rose 7% in July While Pending Deals Hit a Five-Month Low

Zillow counted 382,898 US home sales in July, up 7% on the year, but Redfin's pending deals fell to a five-month low — the pipeline is thinning.

Zillow counted 382,898 completed US home sales in July 2026, seven percent more than a year earlier, and in the same report noted that newly pending listings grew just 0.3%. Redfin, publishing the same day, put pending sales at 311,150 for the four weeks to 2 August — down 3.7% week on week, the steepest weekly fall since 2022, and 1.9% below last year. The two headlines look contradictory and are not. One measures what closed in July; the other measures what is being signed now.

Closings look backwards, contracts look forwards

A sale that completed in July was agreed in late May or June, when the 30-year mortgage rate was lower than it is today. Redfin's tracker catches the decision at the moment it is made, and by early August that decision was being deferred: the firm cited a daily average mortgage rate of 6.82% on 3 August, above the 6.69% weekly average that marked an eleven-month high days earlier. The tell is that Zillow's own forward measure agrees. Newly pending listings at plus 0.3% year on year is not growth in any meaningful sense, and it sits alongside the plus 7% closings figure in the same document.

July closings were also 2.7% below June, so even the backward-looking series has stopped climbing month to month.

Prices are still rising, and slowly

The Zillow Home Value Index reached $371,757 in July, up 0.4% on the month and 1.1% on the year. Redfin's median sale price, a different basket measuring what actually transacted rather than a valuation model, came in at $406,362, up 2.9%. Inventory stood at 1.41 million listings, 1.5% above last year, with 387,203 new listings added in July, up 3.1%. Homes took a median 25 days to go under contract, five days longer than a year ago, and 27.1% of listings had a price cut — though 30.8% still sold above asking, which is not the profile of a market in retreat.

What it means for yield

Glopra's data puts the US national average at $2,454 per square metre on a gross rental yield of 6.71%, with prices up 2.0% over the past twelve months. After the standardised non-resident rental tax of 10.66% used in our methodology, that gross figure works out near 6.0% net — among the better risk-adjusted returns in a developed market, and a large part of why US residential holds up for income buyers even when capital growth stalls.

The rental side is what keeps that arithmetic intact. Zillow's typical asking rent hit $1,962 in July, up 2.3% year on year, running slightly ahead of its home value index. When rents grow faster than prices, yields widen rather than compress. The offsetting signal in the same report is that 39.8% of rental listings now advertise a concession — a free month, waived fees — which is money that does not show up in the headline rent but does come out of the owner's return.

Sources: Zillow July 2026 Market Report https://zillow.mediaroom.com/2026-08-06-Zillows-July-Market-Report-shows-a-7-sales-surge,-but-leading-indicators-point-to-a-slower-second-half; Redfin Housing Market Update https://www.redfin.com/news/housing-market-update-homebuying-demand-stalls-summer/

Market data: United States · Miami