Mortgage rates next to Sacramento pending sales and list prices

The 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.86% in September 2026, up from 6.05% in February, and every weekly reading in October so far has been above 7%. Over the same stretch, Sacramento's pending listings fell from 2,431 in June to 2,190 in September. It's tempting to draw a straight line between those two facts. Below are the numbers, and then the reasons I only draw it in pencil.

The rate series and how I averaged it

The rate is FRED series MORTGAGE30US, the 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average in the United States, from Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey. It is weekly, dated on Thursdays, and national. Nothing about it is specific to Sacramento. Freddie Mac says on its rate page that the survey is built from thousands of loan applications submitted to it, for purchase loans with good to excellent credit and 20% down. Your buyer's rate can be higher or lower.

The Sacramento listing data is monthly, so I turned the weekly rate into a monthly one. My method: take every weekly reading whose date falls in the calendar month and average them. Most months have four, some have five. September 2026 had four readings, 6.71%, 6.76%, 6.95% and 7.03%, which average to 6.86%. October's four readings through the 22nd, 7.28%, 7.40%, 7.40% and 7.32%, average 7.35% so far.

The Sacramento side uses two FRED series for the metro (CBSA 40900): the pending listing count and the median listing price. Neither is seasonally adjusted.

Two charts, because one would mislead

A rate lives between 2 and 8. Pending listings live between about 1,300 and 4,800. Putting both on one chart takes two vertical axes, and with two axes the person drawing the chart decides how closely the lines appear to move by choosing the scales. I used to see the same trick in corridor reports, volume on one axis and crashes on the other, stretched until they kissed. So here are two charts with honest zero lines.

The rate's low month was December 2020 at 2.68%. Its high was October 2023 at 7.62%. Pending listings in Sacramento peaked at 4,842 in July 2020 and hit bottom at 1,320 in January 2023.

The clearest stretch is 2022. The monthly rate went from 3.45% in January to 6.90% in October. Sacramento pending listings went from 3,048 in March to 2,047 in October, and October 2022 came in 43% below October 2021. The two lines moved hard in opposite directions in the same few months. Since January 2023 the monthly rate has stayed between 6.05% and 7.62%, and pending listings have ranged from 1,320 to 2,431. Both lines have mostly been treading water.

Year by year

Every row below covers January through September, so 2026 compares fairly with earlier years.

The rate column is my average of monthly averages. The other three are my averages of nine monthly values, with the per-square-foot figure from FRED's median listing price per square foot series, rounded to the dollar. In 2026 the rate averaged lower than in any January to September period since 2022, and pending listings rose 6.1% over 2025. The median list price kept slipping, down 1.2%.

Look at 2023 for the reason I'm careful with list prices. The rate was far higher than in 2021, yet the median asking price was about $72,000 higher too. Asking prices respond to rates slowly, if they respond in any simple way. They also depend on which houses happen to be listed. A month heavy with big houses in the foothills lifts the median without any single house costing more.

The per-square-foot column shows this. From 2022 to 2023 the median list price rose 2.9%, while the median price per square foot fell 2.3%. Same market, opposite answers, depending on which median you ask. My reading is that the 2023 mix leaned toward larger houses, though the data can't prove that. The same thing may be happening now in reverse: in September 2026 the median list price was 2.6% below a year earlier, and price per square foot was unchanged at $340.

Correlation, and why I keep it in pencil

I ran the correlation between the monthly rate and Sacramento pending listings for all 93 months from January 2019 to September 2026. It came out around -0.84. That is a strong negative relationship on paper: higher rates, fewer pending sales.

Here is why I don't print it in ink. Both series trend over time, and two trending series correlate easily. Pending sales depend on how many houses are for sale in the first place, and 2021 had very few. 2020 and 2021 had their own disruptions that had nothing to do with rates. And pending counts swing with the seasons while the rate mostly doesn't. Two things that both rise every summer will correlate whether or not one causes the other. Nobody ever fixed a freeway by banning August.

What I'm comfortable saying: in the one period when rates moved fast, 2022, Sacramento pending sales dropped fast. That's consistent with rates mattering a lot. It doesn't measure how much.

If you want to check my work, it takes about ten minutes. Download the CSV for MORTGAGE30US and the two Sacramento series from FRED. Group the weekly rows by the month in their date, average each group, and line the result up against the monthly listing rows. Then run the correlation on any window you like. When I run it on January 2023 to September 2026 alone, 45 months, it comes out around -0.02. That is no relationship at all. Nearly all of the -0.84 comes from the 2020 to 2022 swing. So I treat -0.84 as a reason to look closer, and not as a finding.

What a seller can do with this

Your buyer's monthly payment is the link between the national rate and your sale. A worked example shows the size of it.

Between February and September 2026, the payment on that example loan rose by about $255 a month. A buyer approved for a fixed payment in the spring can afford less house in the fall. If you want to see how credit score and down payment change a buyer's rate, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has an interest rate explorer.

Some practical steps when rates are rising and you need to sell:

1. Watch the Thursday number. It tells you which way your buyers' budgets moved that week.
2. Ask about the buyer's rate lock when an offer comes in. The CFPB defines a rate lock as a promise that the rate won't change between the offer and closing. An expiring lock gives the buyer a deadline as real as yours.
3. Price for today's payment. A price that worked at 6.05% in February is asking more of a buyer at 6.86%.
4. Get a second number. A cash buyer doesn't need a mortgage, so the Thursday rate doesn't decide whether they can close.

That last point is where Lorris, a Sacramento cash buyer, comes in for some sellers. Get your agent's net estimate on a listing at today's rates, then compare against a cash offer. The two numbers won't match. What matters is which one leaves you more once you count the months each one takes.

The last weekly rate before I wrote this was 7.32% on October 22. Sacramento's October listing numbers are due on FRED on November 5. They'll be the first month to show whether a 7% rate does to pending sales here what the 2022 run-up did.