2026 does not yet qualify as a buyer’s market on absorption. Across the seven-county region, year-to-date supply sits at 3.6 months (a 27.7% monthly absorption rate), which is still inside seller’s-to-balanced territory. The conventional threshold for a buyer’s market is more than 6 months of supply, or an absorption rate below roughly 16–17% per month.
But the direction is unmistakable. Regional months of supply has climbed from 2.6 → 3.3 → 3.6 over three years, and absorption has fallen from 39.0% → 29.9% → 27.7%. Two individual markets have crossed or touched the buyer’s-market line: Schuyler County hit 6.2 months in July 2026, and Tompkins County peaked at 5.1 months in June.
The honest classification for 2026 is a balanced market that is tilting toward buyers, with pockets — Schuyler, high-end Tompkins — already there.
The data confirms it and explains the mechanism. Across the five-county board footprint, single-family non-waterfront sell-through has fallen to 61.5% — the lowest in six years. Buyers did not leave. Sellers arrived: new listings are up 16.6% since 2024. And for the first time in six years, average list price went nowhere ($337,472, −0.2%).
How to read absorption
| Months of supply | Monthly absorption rate | Market condition |
| Under 4 months | Above 25% | Seller’s market |
| 4 to 6 months | 17% – 25% | Balanced |
| Over 6 months | Below 17% | Buyer’s market |
Months of supply = active inventory ÷ average monthly closed sales. Absorption rate is the inverse, expressed as the share of standing inventory that sells each month.
Region totals, seven counties combined
| Metric | 2024 (Jan–Jul) | 2025 (Jan–Jul) | 2026 (Jan–Jul) | 2026 vs. 2024 |
| Closed sales | 1,445 | 1,525 | 1,567 | +8.4% |
| New listings | 2,219 | 2,485 | 2,530 | +14.0% |
| Average active inventory | 530 | 728 | 809 | +52.6% |
| Sales-weighted median price | $216,364 | $236,215 | $248,329 | +14.8% |
| Months of supply | 2.57 | 3.34 | 3.61 | +40.5% |
| Absorption rate | 39.0% | 29.9% | 27.7% | −11.3 pts |
Full-year figures for the two completed years: 2024 — 2,713 sales, $226,431 weighted median, 2.56 months supply, 39.1% absorption. 2025 — 2,869 sales, $241,577 weighted median, 3.27 months supply, 30.5% absorption.
What changed is supply: inventory grew more than 50% while sales grew 8%. Buyers finally have choices, and that is what is loosening the market — not buyers disappearing.
County-by-county, January–July Closed sales
| County | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | 26 vs 25 |
| Tompkins | 323 | 349 | 374 | +7.2% |
| Cayuga | 250 | 264 | 299 | +13.3% |
| Cortland | 171 | 140 | 157 | +12.1% |
| Seneca | 114 | 113 | 126 | +11.5% |
| Schuyler | 75 | 66 | 69 | +4.5% |
| Chemung | 367 | 418 | 389 | −6.9% |
| Tioga | 145 | 175 | 153 | −12.6% |
Sales-weighted median price
| County | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | 26 vs 24 |
| Tompkins | $355,093 | $393,047 | $362,934 | +2.2% |
| Cayuga | $182,797 | $210,024 | $232,329 | +27.1% |
| Cortland | $187,535 | $193,235 | $226,227 | +20.6% |
| Seneca | $177,850 | $194,004 | $203,989 | +14.7% |
| Schuyler | $186,473 | $257,052 | $290,882 | +56.0% |
| Chemung | $155,439 | $159,354 | $172,942 | +11.3% |
| Tioga | $199,145 | $200,324 | $231,127 | +16.1% |
Tompkins is the outlier: prices rose 10.7% in 2025, then gave back 7.7% in 2026. Every surrounding county kept climbing. That is meaningful — the affordability spillover into Cayuga, Cortland, and Schuyler is real and it is repricing those markets faster than Ithaca itself.
Months of supply — the absorption picture
| County | 2024 avg | 2025 avg | 2026 avg | July 2026 | 2026 peak | Condition |
| Schuyler | 3.16 | 4.30 | 4.26 | 6.2 | 6.2 (Jul) | Buyer’s, at the margin |
| Chemung | 1.90 | 3.54 | 3.90 | 4.7 | 4.7 (Jun) | Balanced |
| Tompkins | 2.91 | 3.51 | 3.81 | 4.6 | 5.1 (Jun) | Balanced |
| Cayuga | 2.19 | 2.81 | 3.40 | 4.2 | 4.2 (Jun) | Balanced |
| Cortland | 1.86 | 2.63 | 2.81 | 3.2 | 3.2 (Jul) | Seller’s |
| Tioga | 2.19 | 2.70 | 2.71 | 3.7 | 3.7 (Jul) | Seller’s |
| Seneca | 1.69 | 2.37 | 1.84 | 2.7 | 2.7 (Jul) | Seller’s, tightest in region |
Absorption rate, January–July average
| County | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
| Cortland | 49.9% | 34.2% | 32.4% |
| Seneca | 48.9% | 37.4% | 44.8% |
| Chemung | 45.7% | 27.5% | 25.1% |
| Cayuga | 36.3% | 31.4% | 27.5% |
| Tioga | 36.3% | 34.0% | 28.8% |
| Tompkins | 32.3% | 29.4% | 26.8% |
| Schuyler | 30.9% | 20.4% | 21.1% |
The Ithaca Board of REALTORS view — six years, five counties
Source: IBR MLS export, single-family residential and condo/townhouse, non-waterfront, Cayuga / Schuyler / Seneca / Tioga / Tompkins, January 2021 – August 2026. 68 months, 9,820 closed sales, 12,403 new listings.
January–August, year over year
| Jan–Aug | Closed sales | New listings | Sell-through | Listing surplus |
| 2021 | 1,348 | 1,778 | 75.8% | +430 |
| 2022 | 1,348 | 1,786 | 75.5% | +438 |
| 2023 | 1,047 | 1,490 | 70.3% | +443 |
| 2024 | 970 | 1,380 | 70.3% | +410 |
| 2025 | 988 | 1,512 | 65.3% | +524 |
| 2026 | 989 | 1,609 | 61.5% | +620 |
Sell-through = closed sales ÷ new listings in the same period. It answers a simpler question than months of supply: for every hundred homes that came to market, how many found a buyer?
The single most important finding
Demand has not weakened. Supply has grown. Closed sales for January–August have been essentially frozen for three straight years: 970, 988, 989. That is a variance of under 2%. Trailing-twelve-month sales as of August 2026 stand at 1,558 — against 1,557 at the end of 2025. Buyer volume is flat to the unit.
Over the same three years new listings went 1,380 → 1,512 → 1,609, up 16.6% from the 2024 floor. The entire shift in market balance is coming from the seller side of the ledger. This is not a demand recession; it is a supply normalization after a two-year inventory drought.
Clearance rate, trailing twelve months
| Period ending | Clearance |
| Dec 2021 | 108.2% |
| Dec 2022 | 108.4% |
| Dec 2023 | 93.0% |
| Dec 2024 | 84.0% |
| Dec 2025 | 85.4% |
| Aug 2026 | 75.6% |
This is trailing-twelve sales divided by the MLS active-listing pool. In 2021 and 2022 clearance ran above 100% — the market sold more homes in a year than the pool of listings it had to work with, which only happens when homes are moving faster than they can be counted. Today’s 75.6% is the lowest in the series by nine full points.
Price: the escalator stopped
Weighted average list price, January–August:
| Jan–Aug | Avg list price | YoY |
| 2021 | $247,192 | — |
| 2022 | $273,207 | +10.5% |
| 2023 | $292,206 | +7.0% |
| 2024 | $299,425 | +2.5% |
| 2025 | $338,133 | +12.9% |
| 2026 | **$337,472** | −0.2% |
2026 is the first year in six that average list price did not rise. Not a decline of any consequence — but the first flat reading in the series, and it arrives in the same year sell-through fell to a six-year low. Sellers stopped raising their asks before buyers had to push back.
August 2026 specifically
250 new listings against 155 closed sales — 62% sell-through, the weakest August in six years. For comparison: August 2021 ran 101%, 2022 118%, 2023 82%, 2024 81%, 2025 86%. It was simultaneously the strongest August for new listings in six years, up 28.9% year over year. Both halves of that sentence matter.
Monthly 2026 vs. 2025 closed sales: Jan 94/97, Feb 82/91, Mar 99/94, Apr 102/118, May 132/117, Jun 153/143, Jul 160/174, Aug 166/155. A market trading sideways, month by month.
Seasonality is flattening
Peak-to-trough monthly sales ratio has compressed from 3.9x in 2022 to 2.5x in 2026. The old rhythm — dead January, frantic June — is softening. Homes that would once have waited for spring are listing year-round, which extends the selling season in both directions and reduces the penalty for a January or November listing.
Does the IBR data change the buyer’s-market verdict?
No. It sharpens the reasoning behind it. Sell-through at 61.5% and clearance at 75.6% are the weakest readings in six years, but neither is near the level that would mark a genuine buyer’s market, and closed-sale volume has not fallen at all. The IBR data says the same thing the NYSAR data says, from a different angle: balanced, tilting toward buyers, driven by supply rather than by any retreat in demand.
What this means for Real Estate
Seneca is the surprise. It is the only county in the region that tightened in 2026 — absorption jumped back from 37.4% to 44.8% and supply fell to 1.84 months. Inventory there is genuinely scarce. If you have sellers anywhere near Ovid, Interlaken, or Lodi, this is the strongest listing pitch in the seven counties.
Schuyler is your buyer’s-market story. 6.2 months in July, 21% absorption, and a 56% price run since 2024 that now looks stretched. Buyers there have leverage; sellers there need realistic pricing and should expect longer marketing time.
Tompkins is normalizing, not crashing. Sales are up 7.2% YTD. Inventory is up 40% from 2024. Price softened 7.7% off the 2025 peak. That combination is a market finding its footing after an inventory drought, and it argues for pricing at market rather than testing the top — homes are still absorbing at nearly 27% a month.
Sellers: you no longer get three offers in a weekend, but you are still selling into a market where roughly one in four active listings goes under contract every month, and median prices across the ring counties are up 11–56% in two years.
Buyers: inventory is up 53% since 2024 and you finally have negotiating room, but supply is still below the 6-month buyer’s-market threshold in six of seven counties. This is a window, not a collapse.
Important caveats on this data
1. Property type is not single-family only. NYSAR’s county activity tables combine single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums. There is no public county-level split. In these seven counties condo and townhome volume is small, so the distortion is modest — but it is real, especially in Tompkins where Ithaca condo stock is concentrated.
2. Lakefront is not excluded. No public data source flags waterfront. This matters most in Schuyler (Seneca Lake), Seneca (between both lakes), Cayuga (Cayuga Lake), and Tompkins (north-end lakefront). Schuyler’s 56% median price jump is almost certainly lakefront-weighted, and its 6.2-month supply may be partly a lakefront inventory effect rather than a broad buyer’s market in the village stock. Filtering lakefront out would likely lower Schuyler’s median materially and could pull its months of supply back under 6.
3. Median price is sales-weighted across months, not a true annual median of every transaction. It is a close approximation, not an exact MLS median.
4. The IBR “Active Listings” column is not point-in-time inventory — do not publish a months-of-supply figure from it. January 2021 shows 2,001 active listings against 140 sales, which is impossible in the hottest seller’s market on record. The column tracks at 0.80–0.94× trailing-twelve-month new listings every single year, meaning it is a rolling count of listings that held active status during the period, not a month-end snapshot. That is why this report uses sell-through and clearance for the IBR data and takes months of supply only from NYSAR and IBR’s own published figure. A true IBR months-of-supply series needs month-end inventory pulled from Matrix.
5. IBR list price is list price, not sold price. The $337,472 figure is the average asking price of new listings, not what homes closed for. A real list-to-sale ratio needs the sold-price field alongside it.
6. Your Ithaca Board of REALTORS numbers will differ from NYSAR’s. IBR reported 355 homes for sale and 5.8 months supply for Tompkins in June 2026; NYSAR shows 263 and 5.1 for the same month. Different MLS footprints and different inventory-count timing. Use IBR figures for Tompkins-specific client materials — they are your board’s official numbers — and use this regional set for cross-county comparison.
To get this exactly as you specified — single-family only, non-lakefront only, true MLS medians — export sold listings for 2024, 2025, and 2026 YTD from NYS MLS with property type = Single Family Residential and waterfront = No, for all seven counties, and I will rerun every figure here against your own data.
Sources
- New York State Association of REALTORS, Monthly Indicators county activity tables, January 2024 – July 2026 (NYSAR Market Data); individual monthly reports including July 2026, December 2025, and December 2024. Data compiled for NYSAR by ShowingTime.
- Ithaca Board of REALTORS MLS, Historic Sales by Year export, January 2021 – August 2026. Filters: Property Type = Single Family Residential, Condo And Townhouse; County = Cayuga, Schuyler, Seneca, Tioga, Tompkins; On Waterfront = No. Approximately 12,000 listings. Supplied directly by Lindsay Hart from Ithaca Board of REALTORS market statistics.
- Ithaca Board of REALTORS Monthly Indicators, June 2026, as summarized in Tompkins County’s June 2026 numbers.
