United States Housing Market Update - October 2025

October’s national housing market gave buyers more options, although inventory growth continued to lose momentum. The historical CSV shows active inventory up 15.26% and total listings up 11.2% from a year earlier. The median list price was $424,200, up 0.4%, while homes spent a median 63 days on the market—five days longer than in October 2024. The accompanying report described the nationwide inventory recovery as stalled, with large differences still separating regional and local markets.

Median List Price -- Trailing 12 Months

Pricing and Value

Metric	Value
National Average List Price	$711,652 (-1.6% YoY)
National Median List Price	$424,200 (+0.4% YoY)
National Median List Price Per Sq Ft	$225/sq ft (-0.5% YoY)
National Median Square Feet	1,833 (-0.1% YoY)

Market Speed and Competition

Metric	Value
National Median Days on Market	63 days (+5 days YoY)
National Price-Increased Share	0.9% (-0.3 percentage points YoY)
National Price-Reduced Share	20.3% (+1.7 percentage points YoY)

Supply Snapshot

Metric	Value
National Active Listings	1,099,856 (+15.3% YoY)
National Total Listings	1,521,384 (+11.2% YoY)

Market Activity

Metric	Value
National New Listings	385,448 (+5.4% YoY)
National Pending Listings	424,554 (+1.6% YoY)
National Pending Ratio	38.6 (-5.2 percentage points YoY)

What This Means for Sellers

• Active inventory increased 15.26% and total listings rose 11.2%, creating more competition among sellers than a year earlier.
• The typical listing spent 63 days on the market, five days longer than in October 2024, so sellers had less reason to assume a quick sale.
• Price reductions affected 20.32% of listings, up 1.7 percentage points year over year, reinforcing the importance of realistic initial pricing.
• The pending ratio fell 5.2 percentage points to 38.6%, suggesting that the available listing pool expanded faster than the share moving under contract.

What This Means for Buyers

• Active and total inventory both increased from a year earlier, giving buyers more choices at the national level.
• The median list price was nearly flat, median price per square foot declined 0.54%, and homes took five additional days to sell.
• More than one in five listings had a price reduction, indicating that some sellers were adjusting to slower conditions.
• The report showed that the South and West generally had more recovered inventory than the Northeast and Midwest, so buyer leverage continued to depend heavily on location.

Deeper Market Data

The broader CSV shows 424,554 pending listings, up 1.59% year over year, while total listings rose 11.2% to 1,521,384. Because total supply grew considerably faster, the pending ratio declined by 5.2 percentage points. The average list price fell 1.57%, median listed square footage was nearly unchanged at 1,833 square feet, and only 0.86% of listings carried a price increase. The article’s special analysis found early pauses in new-listing and search activity in several federal-employment-heavy metros during the government shutdown, while broader measures such as inventory, prices, and market time had not clearly broken from national and regional patterns.