Published October 4, 2026 in Market Update

Pending sales are up in Liberty and Dayton even with rates above 7%

By April Aberle

Real estate, Liberty/Dayton Buy Box

Here is the number that matters most right now. Pending sales across the Liberty/Dayton Buy Box rose 37.9% compared with the same three months last year. The Real Estate Data Aggregator counted 295 pending sales in the three months ending July 31, 2026. That is demand. It is real, and it is growing.

Realtor.com reported that mortgage rates climbed above 7% for the first time since January 2025. That is a real headwind. Yet buyers here kept moving. That gap between the rate story and the local activity story is worth paying attention to.

What sold, and how fast

The Real Estate Data Aggregator counted 267 homes sold across both ZIP codes in the three months ending July 31, 2026. That is up 18.7% from the same period in 2025. More homes closing is a straightforward sign that buyers and sellers are finding each other.

Inventory is tighter than it was a year ago. The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows 435 homes for sale across both ZIPs, down 10.3% from last year. Fewer homes to choose from, with more buyers going under contract. That is a meaningful shift.

Liberty (77575) and Dayton (77535) tell different stories

These two ZIP codes are close together, but the numbers read differently. It is worth looking at each one on its own.

In Liberty (77575), the Real Estate Data Aggregator shows the median sale price dipped to $245,000, down 4.1% from last year. That is a small, honest drop. But homes are selling faster. The median days on market fell to 45 days, which is 15 days shorter than the same period in 2025. And pending sales rose 16%. Prices softened a little, but buyer interest picked up.

In Dayton (77535), the picture is different. The Real Estate Data Aggregator counted 244 homes sold, up 23.9% from last year. The median sale price held at $334,495, up 1.4%. Pending sales jumped 40.7%, to 266 homes. Months of supply fell to 4.8, down 1.7 months from last year. That is a market with real momentum.

What buyers are actually paying

In Dayton (77535), the average sale price came in at 97.8% of list price, according to the Real Estate Data Aggregator. That is up 0.2 points from last year. Sellers there are getting close to what they ask. Only 8.2% of homes sold above list, down just 0.4 points.

In Liberty (77575), the sale-to-list ratio was 93.7%, down 1.8 points from last year. Buyers there have a little more room to negotiate. About 8.7% of homes sold above list price, down 2 points from last year.

The national backdrop

The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that U.S. house prices rose 2.6% from July 2025 to July 2026. Month over month, they rose 0.3% in July on a seasonally adjusted basis. Prices nationally are still moving up, just slowly.

Realtor.com also noted that price cuts hit 20.8% of listings nationally in September, the highest share since October 2022. And active listings topped 1.16 million homes nationally. So there is more competition for sellers across the country. Here in Liberty and Dayton, inventory is actually tighter than a year ago. That is a local detail that matters.

One more thing worth saying: the numbers above cover whole ZIP codes. One street, one subdivision, or one price range can read very differently from the ZIP as a whole. If you want to know what is happening right at your address, that is a different conversation.