With rates above 7% all September, buyers signed 16% fewer contracts than a year ago

National pending-sales reports this week described the weakest buyer activity in nearly twelve years, and 7% mortgage rates got the blame. Those reports run behind the market. The September closings DMAR published two weeks ago came from contracts signed in August, when the 30-year fixed sat near 6.7%. In our September 10 update, we said contracts written above 7% would not show up in the closed data until October.

REcolorado records the date every contract is signed, so there is no need to wait for closings. We counted contracts written across Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson counties in September 2026 and compared them with September 2025. September was the first full month with rates above 7%.

September contracts by county

County	Sept. 2025	Sept. 2026	Change
Adams	586	476	−18.8%
Arapahoe	698	522	−25.2%
Boulder	387	325	−16.0%
Broomfield	100	90	−10.0%
Denver	684	601	−12.1%
Douglas	519	432	−16.8%
Jefferson	639	588	−8.0%
Seven counties	3,613	3,034	−16.0%

Buyers signed 3,034 contracts in September, 579 fewer than a year earlier. Every county came in below 2025. Arapahoe fell furthest at 25%, and Jefferson held up best at 8%. Broomfield's counts are small enough that its 10% figure is a rough read.

Closings in September fell 21% from a year earlier on contracts written below 7%. Contracts written at 7% fell 16%.

The closings DMAR reported for September were down 21.4% year over year, and those deals were struck at the lower August rates. The contracts signed once rates crossed 7% dropped by less. Demand at 7% is weaker than it was a year ago, and the drop so far is no steeper than the one the closing data already showed.

Two weeks into October

We ran the same count for October 1 through 14. Buyers signed 1,368 contracts across the seven counties, against 1,574 over the same two weeks in 2025, a 13.1% decline. Two weeks is too short a window to call a direction, so take this as a snapshot. For now, October is tracking a little closer to last year than September did.

Rate watch

Mortgage News Daily has the 30-year fixed at 7.33% today, down from the high 7.5s earlier this week. Rates crossed 7% in early September and have stayed above it since.

There is one wrinkle in the count. A contract signed in September that has since fallen apart no longer shows as pending, so the 2026 figure runs slightly low against 2025, which has had a full year to settle. The true gap is probably a touch smaller than 16%.

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Sources: REcolorado MLS (Matrix), contracts by purchase contract date (pending and closed) for Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson counties, September 1–30 and October 1–14, 2025 and 2026, pulled October 15, 2026. DMAR Market Trends Report, September 2026. Bloomberg, October 12, 2026. Mortgage News Daily, October 15, 2026.