Sales of new and existing single-family homes and condos were down 8.6% in November across the U.S. from a year earlier, as buyer and seller activity dropped off sharply from their summer peak.
The decline followed two months of higher-than-normal sales, according to exclusive data released by Homes.com on Thursday. Despite last month’s downturn, total sales since November 2024 have remained higher than in the previous 12-month period. The figures include sales that completed the closing stage.
The rise in sales in September and October was stronger than usual for early fall, suggesting some buyers took advantage of a gradual drop in mortgage rates and growing inventory. The number of houses on the market over the past three months was more than 15% higher than during the same period a year ago.
“That larger inventory of homes available for purchase, along with a slight decline in mortgage interest rates from their early-summer peak, may have made it easier for buyers to navigate the market,” the report stated.
The number of completed sales in November, 247,193, was down from a peak of almost 345,000 in June. That seasonal drop-off is normal in the cyclical homebuying market. Still, the more than 3.5 million sales over the past 12 months reflect a number 0.5% greater than seen during the previous 12.
Sales climbed 7.4% in September from one year earlier, and 2.4% in October, according to this week’s report.
Only two of 40 metropolitan areas for which Homes.com measured the year-to-year change saw an increase in sales in November: Cleveland’s sales rose 0.8% from the same month in 2024, and Phoenix’s increased 0.6%.
There was less of a regional pattern in the data than in October, when Midwestern cities made up six of the 10 metropolitan areas with the largest increases in sales. A number of places where sales grew markedly in the previous two months saw the reverse in November, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego in California, as well as Pittsburgh, San Antonio, and Kansas City.
“The sharpest declines, though, were in markets that had already shown waning activity during October,” the report said.
Sales fell the most in another California city, San Jose, plummeting 20.1% from November 2024. In Tampa, which led the nation with an increase of 11.9% in October, sales fell 5.7% last month.