Realtor.com October 2026 inventory: Boise listings turn in 50 days, Dallas-Fort Worth stays the affordable choice

Realtor.com published its October 2026 housing inventory for the metro areas it tracks, and the new data, republished through FRED, shows a market where Texas metros move at very different speeds even a short drive apart. Across the three metros in today's release, median days on market range from 50 to 84, active listings from under 3,000 to nearly 29,000, and median listing prices from just under $420,000 to over $600,000. The pattern is one of divergence, not a single national story, which is exactly the kind of picture the metro pages are built to show.

Start with the two Texas metros, because they bookend the range. In Austin, Realtor.com data show a median of 84 days on market in October, the slowest of the three, alongside 11,631 active listings and a median listing price of $439,650. That is a balanced-to-buyer market: homes are sitting for nearly three months, roughly a quarter of listings sits unsold, and a buyer who moves deliberately holds the stronger hand. Austin's inventory has been building for over a year as new construction completes against a slowing tech hiring cycle, and the October figures put it at the opposite end of the spectrum from its pandemic-era days-on-market prints.

Related reading: Housing Inventory Climbs 6.7% as Sellers Cut Prices.

Dallas-Fort Worth sits in the middle and is the supply story of the release. The metro shows 64 median days on market with 28,952 active listings, more than double Austin's count despite the slower turnover, and a median listing price of $419,900, the most affordable of the group. That number of listings is a function of the building boom across the region, where permit activity has run high for years and builders keep adding product even as sales cool. The combination of deep inventory and a price point below both of its peers keeps DFW the entry-level destination in the Texas triangle, and the sheer size of the listing pool means affordability pressure here is milder than almost anywhere else in the Sun Belt.

Then there is Boise, the outlier that complicates the cheap-Texas, expensive-everywhere-else story. Boise shows just 50 median days on market in October, the fastest turnover of the three, but a median listing price of $609,450, well above either Texas metro and far above what the region's incomes can typically support. Only 2,888 active listings are on the market. Boise is the scarce-supply market: after the 2020-to-2022 inflow wave, sellers held, construction slowed, and the list of homes for sale shrank even as prices stayed elevated. Fifty days on market with that price level is a signal of limited choice rather than strong demand, and it is why affordability math matters more in Idaho than in Texas.

Related reading: Mortgage Rates Hit a 2026 High of 6.95% While Housing Inventory Piles Up.

The affordability arithmetic is the through-line. On a 30-year fixed mortgage near 7 percent, the payment on Boise's median listing price is roughly $1,200 a month higher than on Dallas-Fort Worth's, before taxes and insurance. A buyer with a 20 percent down payment who could carry the DFW median with room to spare is stretched in Boise, and that gap is the reason the two metros read so differently in the same month. The data, as republished by FRED and recomputed by MarketIntelLabs, does not support the headline that housing is uniformly unaffordable or uniformly slow; it is a metro-by-metro question of inventory and price.

The takeaway for the next few weeks is to watch whether Dallas-Fort Worth's inventory keeps growing into the fall selling season, whether Austin's days on market push past the 84-day mark, and whether Boise's listing count stays pinched below 3,000. Each of those moves in the same direction would reinforce the divergence story, and each is visible on the metro pages the day the numbers print. One national average would flatten all three into a single line; the local series keeps them distinct.

Related reading: Mortgage Rates Hit 6.95%: The Payment Math That Turns Inventory Into Price Cuts.

Related reading: Housing Week: Mortgage Rate Eases to 7.32% but Buyers Lose 11% Purchasing Power.

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