Data Analysis

Contract signings fell in every region in July. Florida's closings have not caught it yet.

NAR's Pending Home Sales Index for July, published August 18, fell 2.3% to 71.2. Our nineteen Florida markets closed 7.2% more sales than last July, and the gap between those two numbers is a timing story.

Contract signings on existing homes fell 2.3% in July, the National Association of Realtors reported August 18, and fell in all four regions of the country. The index now sits at 71.2, which is 2.2% below July of last year.

The South, the region that contains Florida, slipped 2.2% for the month and 3.0% from a year ago, to an index of 85.0. The West fell hardest, down 4.7% in a month. NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun put it on borrowing costs: "The highest mortgage rates of the year hit right in the middle of summer, and that's pulling back contract signings."

An index of 71.2 means contract activity is running 29% below the pace of 2001, the year NAR set equal to 100. That is the context for every headline this report generates: signings are not just down this month, they are running at some of the weakest levels in the index's history.

What Florida's own numbers say

The Pending Home Sales Index measures signings, the earliest hard signal in a sale. Our MLS feeds measure closings, the last one. A contract signed in July typically closes in late August or September, so today's index is a preview of closings that have not happened yet.

That is why the two numbers below can both be true. NAR says Southern signings fell 3.0% from a year ago. Our nineteen Florida markets closed 26,353 sales in July, 7.2% more than the 24,577 they closed in July 2025.

July's closings were signed in May and June, before what Yun calls the highest rates of the year did their work. The signings that slowed in July become the closings of September.

The demand underneath those closings has actually firmed over the year. The median Florida sale in July went under contract in 48 days, four days faster than last July, and sellers collected a median 95.1% of their original asking price against 93.8% a year ago. Fewer people are signing contracts nationally, but the ones closing in Florida are closing faster and closer to ask than they were last summer.

What this number does not mean

The index is not a count. NAR does not publish a number of contracts signed; it publishes activity relative to 2001. A 2.3% monthly move describes the pace of signings, not prices, and says nothing about any individual market.

The South is not Florida. The region runs from Delaware to Texas, sixteen states and the District of Columbia, and Florida's share of it is not broken out in this release. Our closing counts are the Florida-specific evidence, and they measure a later stage of the same pipeline.

And our closed-sales line is not seasonally adjusted. July closings almost always come in below June's. The comparison that carries information is July against last July, not July against June.

If you are in this market

Buying: falling signings nationally mean less competition at the table this fall, and the Florida numbers say homes that are priced right still move, four days faster than last year. The leverage is real but it is not unlimited.

Selling: the 95.1% sale-to-ask figure is the number to respect. Sellers are getting closer to their ask than last year because the overpriced listings are not the ones closing. If signings keep sliding nationally, the September and October closing data will be thinner, and pricing to the first thirty days matters more, not less.

Watching the market: our August closing numbers, published next month, are the first place a July signing slowdown would surface in Florida. That is the checkpoint.

Limitations

The national and regional figures are NAR's, seasonally adjusted, preliminary and subject to revision; the index's own base year and methodology are NAR's choices and we cannot audit them. Our closed-sales counts are computed from the MLS feeds we license across nineteen Florida markets, are not seasonally adjusted, and count closings, not signings; no pending or contract-signing count of our own appears in this article. Days on market and sale-to-original-ask are medians across those markets and mask wide differences between them. Closings lag signings by roughly six weeks, so nothing in our July data can confirm or refute NAR's July signings figure; the earliest test is our August data.

Sources and links

• National Association of Realtors, Pending Home Sales, July 2026
• All markets: /data/markets/
• Related: /news/florida/two-floridas-price-split-july-2026/

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.