Everyone's Sure Sellers Are Still Calling the Shots. The Territory-Wide Number Says Otherwise.

If you've talked to anyone who sold a house around here in the last year or two, you've probably heard some version of the same thing: buyers are still paying over asking, sellers still hold all the cards, it's still that kind of market. I hear it constantly.

Here's what the data actually says.

Across the whole territory, for the twelve weeks ending August 30, 2026, the median sale-to-list ratio came in at 110.4%. A year earlier, over the same twelve-week stretch, it was 114.3%. That's a real drop in how much sellers are getting above their asking price, not a rumor and not a guess. MLS sold data backs it up, and it's the kind of gap you don't see by accident.

So the story that's been going around, especially about a couple of the smaller towns we track, doesn't hold up when you look at the whole territory instead of just one corner of it. Zoom out, and the trend line is moving the other way.

That doesn't mean sellers lost their edge everywhere. It means the edge is a little smaller than it was, on average, across the board.

What does that look like in real life? A little less bidding-war energy. A little more room for a buyer to negotiate instead of just matching the list price and hoping. Sellers who priced aggressively a year ago and got away with it are finding the ceiling a bit lower now.

It's worth saying plainly: this is one territory-wide number, and individual towns still tell their own stories.

In Webster, the median sale price rose to $415,000 this period.

In Webster, the average sale-to-list ratio fell about 2.5 percentage points, so homes there are fetching more even as sellers give back a bit more to close the deal.

In Rochester's 14620 area, the median sale price rose about 3% year over year.

In that same part of Rochester, the average sale-to-list ratio fell about 10 percentage points year over year, a bigger version of that same trade-off. That's the shape of the story: prices holding up, but the gap between ask and sale narrowing.

The territory also kept moving. Homes sold totaled 675 this period, up from 595 a year earlier, so this isn't a market that went quiet. It's a market where sellers are still doing fine, just not quite as well as the recent headlines suggest.

What I'll be watching next: whether that sale-to-list number keeps narrowing or holds steady from here. If it keeps drifting down, that tells buyers they have more room to negotiate than they think. If it levels off, sellers still have the stronger hand, just a slightly less dominant one than last year.

If you're weighing a move, in any of these towns, I'm always happy to walk through what your specific street and situation look like. Talk soon.

Scott