Fewer single-family homes traded hands between July and September than in the third quarter of last year, even as a steady drop in interest rates appeared to help draw more homeowners to list.

According to data from The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review, single-family sales were down 9.43 percent in the third quarter, to 2,911. The median sale price for the period was $500,000, an 11.11 percent increase year-on-year.

Year-to-date through Sept. 30, 6,726 single-family homes have sold, a 7.91 percent decrease over sales through the same point in 2023. The year-to-date median single-family sale price is $485,000, up 9.66 percent from the same figure as of Sept. 30, 2023.

According to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors, during that same period 4,655 Granite State single-family homes came on the market, an 8.69 percent increase over the third quarter of 2023.

Those new homes may have come on the market in part because of falling mortgage rates. Over the course of the third quarter, the average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dropped from 6.95 percent to 6.08 percent, according to Freddie Mac.

Real estate experts have said that, while many homeowners are content to try and make their current living situations work even if their family circumstances make the home suboptimal, a few appeared to be eager to escape the “golden handcuffs” of low, pandemic-era interest rates on their home mortgages and use built-up equity to try and pay for a home that meets their needs.

But it’s an open question whether buyers who’ve been sitting on the sidelines share the same urgency, with some possibly having been content to wait for the Federal Reserve’s long-expected rate-cutting campaign to play out before going shopping again.