Omaha Housing Market, September 2026: Rates Went Up, Buyers Paused, Prices Held

Market Updates  ·  Chris Jamison, Nebraska Realty  ·  October 2026

The Omaha housing market had a quieter September than it's used to. Mortgage rates climbed back over 7%, and fewer buyers wrote offers. Accepted offers fell almost 19% from a year ago. Then you look at prices and they barely flinched. The median home in the metro sold for $325,000, up 2.8% from last September, and the typical home still went under contract in about three weeks.

So which is it, a slowdown or a healthy market? A little of both. Here's what the September numbers say, what changed from August, and what I'd do with it if you're selling or buying this fall.

All numbers: Great Plains Regional MLS (GPRMLS) Monthly Indicators for the Omaha Area Region, new and existing homes combined, report current as of October 13, 2026. The region covers Douglas, Sarpy, Dodge, Saunders and Washington counties in Nebraska and Pottawattamie, Harrison and Mills counties in Iowa.

What happened in September

The short story is rates. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate on September 16, the first increase since 2023, and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate moved back above 7% by late September after averaging 6.67% in August (Freddie Mac numbers, as cited in the GPRMLS report). A buyer who was approved for a payment in August suddenly had a little less house at the same payment, and some of them hit pause.

You can see it in the counts. Compared with September 2025:

• Accepted offers (pending sales): 849, down 18.8% from 1,046
• Closed sales: 979, down 12.0% from 1,112
• New listings: 1,737, down 12.4% from 1,983
• Homes for sale at month end: 2,666, down 5.6% from 2,823

Accepted offers are the number to watch, because they turn into closings a month or two later. Two months in a row of big drops tells me October and November closings will probably look slow too.

Did August's big drop hold up?

Mostly, yes. When August's numbers first came out, accepted offers were down 19.8% from the year before. The September report revises August as late paperwork gets entered, and August now looks like about a 15% drop instead. Closings went from −8.9% to about −7%.

That's a pattern I've been tracking all year: the first read on sales volume in Omaha almost always comes in softer than what actually happened. So September's −18.8% will probably get revised up a few points too. But a revision that size doesn't erase a drop that size. Buyers really did slow down.

Prices didn't follow

Here's the part that surprises people. With fewer offers, you'd expect prices to slide. They didn't, at least not year over year:

• Median sold price: $325,000, up 2.8% from $316,125
• Average sold price: $383,791, up 2.0%
• Percent of list price received: 98.9%, the same as last September
• Days on market: 23, down from 25

The median did come down from August's $345,000. Some of that is normal. Omaha's median eases off its summer high almost every fall, and you can see that same dip in the GPRMLS trend line year after year. This year's summer-to-fall dip was a bit bigger than last year's, so it's worth watching. But year to date the median is $335,000, up 3.1%, and closed sales are up 1.0%. A soft finish hasn't undone a decent year.

The reason prices are holding is supply. Even after a slower September, the metro has about 2.6 months of homes for sale. That's still tight. Resale homes are at 2.0 months, the most since last fall but nowhere near a buyer's market.

New construction vs. resale: two different markets

If you only read one table this month, read this one. Builders pulled back hard, and new construction and resale homes are behaving very differently.

Resale homes still move in under three weeks. New builds take closer to two months and have nearly three times the supply. That gap matters for both sides, and it's a big part of why the cheapest new homes cost what they do (I dug into that in why Omaha isn't building starter homes anymore).

If you're thinking about selling

This is still a good market to sell in, just not a spring market. Buyers have a few more choices than they did six months ago and a higher rate eating into their budget, so they're comparing more carefully. A few things follow from that:

• Price it right the first week. Homes are still getting 98.9% of list on average. The ones that miss are usually the ones that started too high and sat.
• Condition shows up in the offer. With more homes to compare, the move-in-ready ones get the attention.
• Waiting for spring is a real option. Fall and winter are always slower here. If you don't need to move until next year, the spring market usually has more buyers. If you do need to move, the buyers who are out right now aren't browsing.

If you want to know where your home fits, the Omaha market snapshot has this month's numbers at a glance, and I'm happy to put together a real number for your house.

If you're thinking about buying

Higher rates are the bad news, and there's no way around that. The better news is that you're shopping in the calmest market Omaha has had in a year. Supply is up from its winter low, fewer people are writing offers, and you have a little more time to think than you would have in April.

Run your payment at today's rates before you fall in love with a house; the mortgage calculator makes that quick. If you're looking at new construction, that's where supply is highest and homes sit the longest, so it's the part of the market where asking for something is most reasonable. And if you're new to all of this, the Omaha Home Buyer's Guide walks through it start to finish.

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