Every conversation I have right now starts the same way. A seller asks if they missed the window. A buyer asks if prices are about to fall. Both of them are working off headlines, and the headlines are about markets that look nothing like ours.
So I pulled the numbers. Not a summary of a summary — the actual export from our Ithaca Board of REALTORS MLS, going back to January 2021. Single-family and condo/townhouse, non-waterfront only (lakefront distorts everything in this region, and I wanted the houses real people actually live in year-round), across Cayuga, Schuyler, Seneca, Tioga, and Tompkins counties. Sixty-eight months. 9,820 closed sales. 12,403 new listings.
Here’s what six years of our own data says.
Buyers didn’t leave
This is the finding that surprised me, and it is the one nobody is talking about.
Closed sales, January through August:
| Year | Closed sales |
| 2021 | 1,348 |
| 2022 | 1,348 |
| 2023 | 1,047 |
| 2024 | 970 |
| 2025 | 988 |
| 2026 | 989 |
Look at the last three years. 970, 988, 989. That is a variance of under two percent across three full selling seasons. If you measure trailing twelve months instead, we’re at 1,558 sales as of August — against 1,557 at the end of 2025. One sale apart.
Whatever is changing in this market, it is not buyer demand. Buyer demand has been the single most boring number on my spreadsheet for three years running.
Sellers arrived
Here is the other side of the ledger. New listings, January through August:
| Year | New listings |
| 2024 | 1,380 |
| 2025 | 1,512 |
| 2026 | 1,609 |
Up 16.6% in two years. And August 2026 was the strongest August for new listings in the entire six-year series — 250 homes, up almost 29% over August 2025.
That is the whole story. Same buyers, more houses. Everything else in this post is a consequence of those two facts sitting next to each other.
What that does to sell-through
I like sell-through because it answers a question anyone can understand: for every hundred homes that came to market, how many found a buyer?
| Jan–Aug | Sell-through |
| 2021 | 75.8% |
| 2022 | 75.5% |
| 2023 | 70.3% |
| 2024 | 70.3% |
| 2025 | 65.3% |
| 2026 | 61.5% |
In 2021, three out of four listings sold. Today it’s three out of five. August alone ran 62% — the weakest August in six years, when 2022’s August ran 118%.
And the surplus — listings that came on and didn’t sell in the same period — has grown from roughly 410 homes in 2024 to 620 in 2026. That’s 200 more sellers than two years ago competing for the same number of buyers.
Prices stopped climbing (but didn’t fall)
Average list price, January through August:
| Year | Avg list price | Change |
| 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% |
This is the first year in six that the number didn’t go up.
Read that carefully, because it’s easy to over-read. Down two-tenths of one percent is not a correction. It is not a crash. It is the escalator stopping. After five straight years of sellers asking more than the year before — including a 12.9% jump in 2025 — sellers in 2026 collectively decided to stop raising their price. They read the room before the room made them.
So is this a buyer’s market?
Not yet. Honestly, not close.
A buyer’s market means roughly six months of standing inventory, or an absorption rate below about 17% per month. Nothing in our five-county data is anywhere near that. Sales volume is flat, not falling. Prices are flat, not dropping. What we have is a market where buyers finally have choices — which is a genuinely different thing from a market where buyers have leverage.
The regional picture from the New York State Association of REALTORS says the same thing from a different angle: about 3.6 months of supply across the broader seven-county area year-to-date, up from 2.6 in 2024 but still short of the six-month line (NYSAR market data). Schuyler County has crossed it. Tompkins touched 5.1 months in June. Everywhere else is balanced.
The right label for 2026 is a balanced market tilting toward buyers, driven entirely by supply.
One more thing: the calendar is changing
Our peak-to-trough ratio — the gap between the busiest and slowest sales month of the year — has compressed from 3.9x in 2022 to 2.5x in 2026.
The old rhythm of a dead January and a frantic June is softening. People are listing year-round. If you’ve been holding a house until spring because “that’s when things sell,” the penalty for listing in November is much smaller than it used to be — and you’d be competing against a lot fewer people.
What I’d tell you if you were sitting across from me
If you’re selling: your buyer is still out there. The same number of them bought a house this year as last year and the year before. But you now have 200 more neighbors on the market than a seller two years ago did, and the ones who price at market are the ones who sell. The ones testing the top of the range are the 38% that didn’t sell. Price it right and go first.
If you’re buying: this is the most negotiating room you’ve had since 2020, and it came without prices falling out from under you. You can see multiple houses. You can ask for an inspection contingency. You can sleep on it. That window exists because of inventory, not because of distress — which means it closes quietly whenever listings slow down, not with a headline.
If you’re waiting: understand what you’re waiting for. If it’s lower prices, nothing in six years of our data suggests they’re coming. If it’s more choice and less pressure, you’re already in it.
Numbers in this post come from the Ithaca Board of REALTORS MLS, single-family and condo/townhouse, non-waterfront, Cayuga / Schuyler / Seneca / Tioga / Tompkins counties, January 2021 – August 2026 (Ithaca Board of REALTORS market statistics). Regional absorption figures come from NYSAR Monthly Indicators, including the July 2026 report. “Average list price” is the asking price of new listings, not the closing price. One caveat worth stating plainly: I did not publish a months-of-supply figure from the IBR export, because the active-listing field in that report is a rolling count rather than a month-end snapshot. For a true Tompkins County inventory figure, the board’s own published number — 355 active, 5.8 months in June 2026 — is the one to use.
Questions about what this means for your specific house or your specific search? That’s the conversation I’d rather be having. Reach me at Lindsay@HartAndHomes.com.
