A spring month that went the right way
Existing-home sales — completed transactions of single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.17 million in May 2026, the National Association of Realtors reported. Sales were up 3.2 percent from April and 3.2 percent from May 2025.
Unlike the Census construction surveys, NAR's series is built from closings reported through multiple listing services rather than from a probability sample, so it is not published with confidence intervals. It is, however, a lagging measure: a May closing generally reflects a contract signed in March or April, when mortgage rates were lower than they would be by September.
Inventory is the part that changed
Unsold inventory at the end of May stood at roughly 1.55 million units, equivalent to about 4.5 months of supply at the prevailing sales pace. That is the range in which the resale market historically stops behaving like a seller's market without tipping into a buyer's one.
The median existing-home price was $429,300, up about 1.3 percent from a year earlier. Price growth at that rate, against consumer inflation running above 3 percent for most of 2026, means real resale prices were slipping even while nominal prices set seasonal highs.
Why the May print did not hold
The improvement proved temporary. NAR's June report showed sales easing to roughly 4.09 million, and by the August report released on September 10 the pace had fallen further while months' supply reached its highest level in about a decade. May stands as the high-water mark of the 2026 spring season rather than the start of a recovery.
Analysis: a single strong month in a lagging series is weak evidence of a turn, and the subsequent prints bear that out. The more durable signal from May is the inventory level — sellers returned to the market faster than buyers did, and that imbalance persisted through the summer.
Who was buying, and on what terms
The composition data in the May release is more informative than the headline pace. First-time buyers were 35 percent of transactions, up from 33 percent in April and 30 percent a year earlier — the highest share since June 2020. The all-cash share was 25 percent, unchanged from April and down from 27 percent in May 2025.
Homes sold in a median of 29 days, faster than April's 32 but slower than the 27 days recorded in May 2025. Distressed transactions, meaning foreclosures and short sales, were 1 percent of the total.
Analysis: a rising first-time share alongside a falling cash share describes a market in which competition from investors and equity-rich repeat buyers eased enough for financed entry-level buyers to win more contracts. The rate backdrop supports that reading — the 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.44 percent in May 2026 against 6.82 percent in May 2025 — though NAR's release reports the shares rather than the reasons behind them. April sales were also revised up to 4.04 million from 4.02 million.