Data Analysis

The Federal Reserve reported on October 7 that consumer credit grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.9 percent in August 2026, down from 4.1 percent in July, with revolving credit falling at a 4.2 percent annual rate while the average rate on credit card accounts assessed interest stood at 22.36 percent.

Total consumer credit outstanding was $5,196.8 billion in August 2026. Nonrevolving credit, which covers auto and student lending, rose at a 4.1 percent annual rate over the same month.

The Federal Reserve's G.19 consumer credit release, published October 7, 2026, reports that consumer credit grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.9 percent in August 2026. That is down from 4.1 percent in July and 3.6 percent in June. Revolving credit, which is mostly credit cards, fell at a 4.2 percent annual rate in August, while nonrevolving credit rose at 4.1 percent. Total consumer credit outstanding was $5,196.8 billion. The average rate on credit card accounts assessed interest was 22.36 percent.

What did the Federal Reserve's August consumer credit report show?

August was the slowest month for consumer credit growth in the run the release shows. The monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates were 3.6 percent in June, 4.1 percent in July and 1.9 percent in August. On a quarterly basis the release reports 3.1 percent for the second quarter of 2026, 2.6 percent for the first quarter, 2.1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2025, 2.3 percent for the third quarter of 2025 and 2.8 percent for the second quarter of 2025.

The split between the two components is what makes August different from the months around it. Revolving credit contracted at a 4.2 percent annual rate. Nonrevolving credit, which the Federal Reserve defines to include auto loans and student loans, grew at 4.1 percent. So the aggregate slowdown is not a general retreat from borrowing. It is households reducing card balances while car and education lending kept growing.

The release marks July's figures as revised. It does not publish the pre-revision values, so the size of that revision cannot be stated here.

Why does a drop in card borrowing matter for housing?

The G.19 excludes loans secured by real estate, so there is no mortgage figure anywhere in this release. What it measures is the rest of the household balance sheet, and that is where a mortgage applicant's capacity is decided. Lenders qualify borrowers on total monthly obligations, so card and auto payments compete directly with a mortgage payment for the same income.

A month in which households shrink revolving balances can be read two ways, and the release itself settles neither. It can mean households are paying down expensive debt, which improves the ratios a mortgage underwriter looks at. It can also mean households are pulling back because the cost of carrying a balance is high. The average rate on all credit card plans was 21.19 percent in August 2026, and 22.36 percent on accounts assessed interest. Both readings point at the same constraint from different directions.

What are credit card and auto loan rates now?

The August 2026 figures, which the Federal Reserve publishes not seasonally adjusted, were 21.19 percent across all credit card plans and 22.36 percent on accounts assessed interest. New car loans averaged 7.54 percent at 60 months and 7.17 percent at 72 months.

Set that against mortgage borrowing. Freddie Mac's 30-year fixed-rate average was 7.28 percent in the week ending October 1, 2026, which is within half a percentage point of the 60-month new car rate. A household looking at those three numbers is being asked to service its most expensive debt at better than 21 percent while taking on housing debt above 7 percent.

How does this fit with what the Federal Reserve said today?

The same Federal Reserve published two things on October 7. The minutes of the September 15-16 meeting came out at 2:00 p.m. ET and the consumer credit release followed at 3:00 p.m. The minutes record that outside of residential mortgages, consumer credit borrowing costs were little changed, and that borrowing for home purchases remained depressed. The August consumer credit data is the quantity side of that same picture: costs little changed, and revolving balances falling. Our separate report on the September FOMC minutes covers the policy decision and the housing passages in full.

What does this mean for Florida buyers?

Florida Realtors reported a single-family median sale price of $415,000 for August 2026, up 1.2 percent from a year earlier, with closed sales of 21,497, down 1.4 percent. Active single-family inventory was 94,610, down 13.0 percent year over year, and months supply of inventory was 4.3, against 5.3 a year earlier.

That is a market where the constraint has moved from supply to payment capacity. Inventory is tighter than a year ago and prices are roughly flat in real terms, so what decides whether a sale happens is whether the buyer can carry the payment alongside everything else they owe. A household carrying a card balance at better than 21 percent has less room for a mortgage payment than the same household did before, whatever the list price says.

Conditions vary across the state, and the desk tracks each market separately on the Tampa, Miami, Orlando and Jacksonville hub pages. Statewide and national coverage runs on the Florida Housing Intelligence front page.

Limitations

The G.19 covers consumer credit and explicitly excludes loans secured by real estate, so nothing in it measures mortgage lending. The connection drawn here between card balances and mortgage qualifying capacity is this desk's reading of how underwriting works, and the release makes no such claim. Monthly percent changes are at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, which annualizes one month of movement and is therefore volatile; a single month is not a trend. The interest rate series are not seasonally adjusted and are reported for August 2026. July's figures are revised in this release and the prior values are not published, so the revision is not quantified here. The chart ends at July 2026 because the published REVOLSL series was last updated September 8, 2026, ahead of today's release; the August percent changes above come from the release itself. That series also shows a step down of roughly $45 billion between November and December 2024, which this desk has not verified as household behavior rather than a benchmark revision, so no interpretation of it is offered. The Florida figures cover existing single-family homes reported through Florida's Multiple Listing Services and are subject to revision. No state-level consumer credit data exists in this release.

Sources

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, G.19 Consumer Credit, August 2026 data, released October 7, 2026, federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/.

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, September 15-16, 2026, released October 7, 2026, federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes20260916.htm.

Revolving Consumer Credit Owned and Securitized (REVOLSL), Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, retrieved from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, fred.stlouisfed.org/series/REVOLSL, series last updated September 8, 2026.

Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average in the United States (MORTGAGE30US), week ending October 1, 2026, fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US.

Florida Realtors, Florida single-family existing homes monthly summary, August 2026, floridarealtors.org/sites/default/files/2026-09/August-2026-Fla-single-family-summary.pdf.

Disclosure: Jon Brooks is a co-founder of Momentum Realty, a Florida real estate brokerage that owns and funds Florida Housing Intelligence. Momentum has a financial interest in Florida real estate transactions, including in markets named here. See our editorial standards.