Monthly Market Snapshot May 2026

Welcome to Season 2 of our podcast! We're excited to kick off a new season with our first episode, Monthly Market Snapshot: May 2026, where we take a closer look at what happened in the real estate market throughout the month of May. In this episode, we break down the latest market data, discuss current trends in inventory, home prices, and buyer and seller activity, and share what these insights could mean for anyone thinking about buying, selling, or investing in real estate. Our goal is to make the numbers easy to understand while providing valuable local market knowledge that can help you stay informed and make confident real estate decisions.

The living you podcast is a conversation about life, real estate, and the journey of living you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to season two. We have concluded season one. We took a little break. We've been busy working real estate, and now we're gonna come talk about it. How have you been, Rich?

SPEAKER_03 0:11

I've been great. We have been super slammed. It's been uh early summer busy mode over here in local real estate. And you and I have been so much on the road and kind of uh divergent pathways that we haven't been able to sit down for a couple weeks and record. So we figured why don't we call what we've done previously season one and moving forward, we'll call this season two because it seems like uh just a natural progression of things. If you're new to our pod, welcome and so thank you so much for joining us. And um today we're gonna go into some, I don't want to call it even boring stuff because that's not what what it is, but we're gonna go into some local market statistics and some data, and we'll talk about our conclusions and our derivations of what that stuff means for us. But in the meantime, Jess, I wanted to start off with a small sort of anecdotal thing that happened to me just literally last night. I get a you and I are agents, right? We get random calls and texts all the time. So here's what happens to me I get a text from someone, it's just a phone number, it's not a name. Now, I'm generally in the practice of saving people that are, you know, I feel like I'm going to have some continued communication with. I I I save them in my phone. That seems like a good practice. It comes in as a number, and it's like, when are when are we gonna get around to talking about this damn property? And I'm like, I'm like, oh, this is aggressive, and and I don't I don't recognize this this name. Like this sounds sounds like I've dropped the ball somehow, or like I've done something wrong. I feel I'm already defensive, you know? Right. So I'm like, oh shoot. So I start to do a little bit of like detective work. I I pull up the number, I look at my call history. About a month and a half ago, I talked to this person, this number for 16 minutes and 40 seconds. So I'm like, okay, so I talked to this person for 16 minutes and 40 seconds. I didn't record their name. I looked back in my notes because I have like a notebook, I write everything down. It's not the best curated thing in the world, but I do have like some kind of chronological tracking of my my daily business. I go back and I don't see anything that rings a bell. And from that time period, I look in my emails, I don't see anything that rings a bell. I'm like, what am I? How do I respond to this? I'm I'm on my toes, I'm defensive, I feel like I've I'm feeling like I'm letting someone down. And I'm like, what do I say? So then so how did it exactly go? So I I had no clue what was going on, and then I I was like, who did I talk to for first of all? I we talk to a lot of people, and a 16-minute conversation is not out of the ordinary because a lot of my properties are kind of nuanced. So for me, like sometimes you have to explain a piece of land for 20 minutes to someone because they're like, Where's the boundary? What is this? What is that? That's it, it takes time. So it could have been anyone. Um, I ended up having to do something else. I was literally preparing a listing, Jess, for for coming up very soon. And then it all clicked. I was like, here's what happened. The the original contact came through from these two sellers, they're they're siblings, and they group texted me. And so it's been a group text for for ages and ages, but the he used like a different number for this this the call and this recent text, but I hadn't saved the names of the gentleman in the group text. I just had I still have like the numbers, and so every time I go through my text chain, I just see like, oh, this is my little groupie group because I see like the block of people, and I don't have that many group texts in my life. This is a long story, but anyway, so finally I realize oh, this is not about an accusatory, how about that damn property? This is their property that's near a dam. So so it wasn't so it was me misinterpreting the tone of this text. It wasn't like it wasn't like, yo, bro, when are we gonna talk about this damn property?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

You gonna ever get back to me, motherfucker?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

It was more like the damn property, the property with the dam.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

It was more like Rich, there's some fine details we'd like to discuss before we you know that makes so much more sense.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

That's why text is dangerous. You just can't tell tone, you just can't tell because the inflection of the word changes the meaning of the word.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

I was so I was because I don't like letting people down. I was like, what have I done to this person?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Oh no, who did I hurt? Uh oh, that's hilarious. Well, haven't had any weird or fun phone calls or anything like that at all, but I certainly have had miles on my car that I never anticipated. And driving from one county to another to a third, uh just been everywhere, but it's been great. It's busy as we expected it would be. And um, but I'm I'm actually anxious to look at these numbers because I don't know. I feel like inventory is coming on now. Again, it's spring sprung a little late, maybe. Um, but I'm pretty steady and busy, and things are coming on, and you know. Yeah, yay.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

Yeah, so what we're doing, what we'll do now is if you're if you're listening to us, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna share my screen. Jess has not seen any of this yet. This is our what we'll do is we'll look at the the data that's produced by our local MLS. It's called the Atsego Delaware Board of Realtors. That's our four-county region in this pocket of upstate New York, which is sort of sandwiched between Binghamton and Albany, close to Oneanta, close to Cooperstown, if any of that means anything to you. That's where we work, that's where we live, and that's our our territory, and that's where the data comes from. Um, so what I'm gonna do is share my screen. We'll talk about some of the numbers and some of the trends. And so this is all I've previewed this once, but Jess has not. So this is how we do it. It's kind of like her live reaction, my data brain, her market brain, and we'll kind of just see where that takes us. Um, if you're watching us, should be able to see this on YouTube and see the screen. If you're listening, there are some graphs and stuff that I will try to make you know more palatable uh from the from the road or wherever you're listening. But um anyway, that's what we're about to do. So I'm just gonna bear with me as I do the um the process here to get things shared. Alright, Jess, are you seeing stuff?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I see stuff.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

Okay, perfect. All right, so I like to start off with the um they always start with some some national trend type stuff, and then we'll we'll go into like local, and then they zoom out to a national trend again. Uh we are now recording this late June of 2026. The data we're looking at is from May. So there's always a lag effect, but so in so either the month of May compared to last May or the entire year of 2026 through the end of May compared to last year or years past, right? That's how this works in general. What we're seeing in the national market is uh existing home sales are up a small margin, 0.2% from the previous month. So incredibly small seasonal uh seasonal gain. And we're looking at just over 4 million homes predicted to be sold for 2026. We've talked about this in the past, Jess. That is a relatively low number of homes sold. The national housing market for existing homes is kind of slow. It's it's on track, it's just a little slow, and we'll talk about multiple reasons why that's happening. Uh, one thing that is new is that it's flattening out in the northeast. In the past, the northeast has been one of the last bastions for for high market activity and for price increases, and the northeast is starting to slow down significantly. So that's new for us. Uh locally, now we're into our four county areas. So some of these numbers are much smaller than national trends, but we've got new listings up 12.2%. So there's 220 new listings in May for our area. However, Jess, pending sales that means things going into contract are down 16%. So eighty eighty nine eighty-nine homes went into pending status in May.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:06

And of course, if you're putting houses on the market, you're not as many are coming off the market. You're going to have an inventory increase. And we're talking about 35.9%, Jess. 553 available homes now in our MLS in the residential status. That's crazy. What's com what's interesting, Jess, is that that's we'll see in a in a deeper dive. That number has been continuing to increase for a while for us. But oftentimes in economics, right, you get more of something available, buyers have more choice, the cost, the the price of that good will come down. Uh, that's not happening where we are yet. Um, we have a continued trend for our median sale price is up. It's up 13% from 221 to 250. So we're literally at 250k for our median sale price for May. And um despite that, our days on market are are well, I guess that correlates. Days on market are down, however, that supply of inventory is up almost to a six-month supply of inventory. Now that's a weird term. What it means, Jess, is just that if if every property available right now was to eventually go into a buyer's hands for contract, it would take about six months for those to all be to all go into contract. Um it's a weird way of explaining inventory, but that basically just means um yeah, how much how much is available compared to the buying interest and activity.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

So you had done that breakdown, I think it was last month, to look at the price points that are coming on and still selling pretty strong, because like you said, like we more inventory means prices should be coming down, but it sort of looked like anything under that 300,000 mark was still going bonkers, you know, and that's your primary market. That's your buyers that you know they live here, they work here, they need to move, they need to upsize, downsize, whatever. They're still having a pretty tough time um finding things uh in that price range that you know that are not getting, I don't know, blown up. And then everything over that was sort of where the inventory was increasing. So I wonder if that's that's exactly the trend that's just continuing. I mean, I don't know why it wouldn't be, because I I know anything under, well, over 300 that I have, I mean, have a little bit of interest, but it's crickets. It's crickets, it's crickets.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

Crickets, and this is what we'll we'll get into this, I think, quite a bit more in the next few minutes. But I think that's that is the takeaway for me as well. There's look, the I think our real estate market is just there's a lot of pressure. I feel like there's a lot of pressure. And what I mean by that is one of these slides, one of these pages, is is affordability. And the affordability index just took another significant downward turn, meaning in the last you know month or six weeks or whatever, the the the consumer is just having an increasingly difficult time finding the funds to purchase that house that they want. And you combine that with the fact that sellers oftentimes, either in their mind or in their agent's mind, they're still wanting to tow this high price expectation that was realistic three years ago, but it's just not realistic in in the mid-summer of 2026. Things are changing. The market is slowing down, buyers are struggling. If you want to sell your home, you've got to really pin pin that market price to where the activity will be. And remember, Jess, now we're talking about increasing inventory. That means there's a lot of choice. If there's a lot of choice, and I want to sell my one thing out of the many, I'd better have a really complex. Yep, better be gorgeous, better be priced well, it better be clean, it better be appealing, you better overweed 100%. If you're gonna ask a premium price, it better be a premium product, bottom line. And if it isn't, then you have to you have to scale it back 100%.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Yes. Yeah, and the market's gonna the market's gonna dictate it. And that's what I think at the end of the day, everyone has to remember. A house sells for what a buyer is willing to pay. That is just the golden rule of real estate. It's what they're willing to pay, what you think it's worth, what your emotional value is, how much you spend $100,000 on that bathroom. No one cares. Please hear me. No one cares. It's what a buyer is willing to pay. So if you feel like the offers are all coming in, if your house is at $250 and offers are coming in $205, $210, $215, that's what the market will bear. It doesn't matter. You now you have to look at and go, all right, what can I actually get from this? You know, and get them as high as you can, of course, which a seller's agent is always gonna do the best and try to get you the most value, but no one's gonna overpay these days. Not like they used to.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

Yep. Um, yeah, and we'll we'll this will come true as we go through this this uh little little presentation, uh, but that'll come up again. I think that is my take-home point if you're gonna uh you want the one the one singular takeaway is that sellers have to wake up a little bit around, especially around here. Uh again, the the Northeast, and especially our little upstate New York pocket has been incredibly protected from any kind of price flattening, right? And we're gonna see it in a second. Our median price is double digit increases for months on end. That is not sustainable. It's just not sustainable in the face of all this stuff. And to that point, the last little key data point that I wanted to point out here is that our for the first time in ages, our one year change in closed sales for May is down. So we have a reduction, a drop-off in closings. That's compared to last May, which, if you remember, that was a slow year. Um, so our May of 2026 is even slower than a tricky year the year before. And for me, if you combine the the slowdown and pendings and that little dung nugget right there, that indicates to me that we are in for a we're in for a little bit of a tough summer for agents that are not on the ball, that are not pricing correctly, and they're not aggressive in what they're doing. Because this is when skill. This is when skill works.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Training support from your offices. Like, I don't care what brokerage you're with, lean into the experienced agents, they've been through shifting markets, talk to them. There should be panels going on. You know, people should be having these conversations because the newer agents, if you've been in this two to five years, you've just been in this sweet spot, and you're gonna be in a real real estate market, and not many, not many of us survive that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

And and to that point, just we'll go to if you're watching this, I'm still sticking on this first page, but um Wol we often tend to think like seller perspective, because you and I at least for the most part try to be kind of listing listing agents. We do both, we love both. But I think what's happening now is this is where the the buyer agent gets to sharpen their knives a little bit, and you're really you can you can advise your buyers in a i i we're getting to a point fully balanced market, and in some probably some price points buyers, you know, power dominant. So you can you can do things like negotiate harder, you can do things like make sure you really get aggressive on those inspection results, you can you can you don't have to worry so much about these these agent compensations, you can probably ask for seller concessions. You know, there's things that agents have in their toolkit that didn't really have to have to pull out all that often in the past, but um but now you know you're your buyers are getting a little bit more negotiating power. It's actually I don't want to call it fun, but like balance is nice. Um and every property, of course, every single property is different. Different, but on the whole, um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah, because I, you know, like just right now I'm working with buyers that they've been through like three or four highest and best, and they have lost, so they still have this mentality that I mean they've written an offer up now, we're showing the property later today. Like they've written the offer up in advance, and if they like it, they're just gonna hit sign in their inbox as we're backing out of the driveway. I mean, they've just been burned, so that's that's still kind of out there too. But again, it still happens, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:21

100% it still happens. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

It's still gonna come down to price point where they're really looking under 300,000. And if you list a cute little cabin with any kind of land right now that has like little wood and little rustic accents, you're going to highest and best. Still, that's what everybody wants. But if you list anything else, that's a more practical house or a village house or something like that, you know, you're going to be at the mercy of the market. And you need to make sure your agent, at least, if you yourself are not listening and you're not, you know, you don't know where to get those resources and information, but make sure your agent is really plugged into resources and information and is watching the market because this is how we this is how we make you successful, is by knowing these things, seeing these things, studying these things. That's why Rich and I have been doing this for three years, four years, looking at the market every month because this is how we advise our clients now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

Yeah. And it look, sometimes for us it gets a little redundant, but I I still want to look, it's like, I don't know, man. I've just, I feel like I'm a professional. I feel like it's my job to know this stuff. I feel like Yeah, it absolutely is. I don't know how you can't want to know this. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yeah, I don't know how you don't know this and function.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Um, but anyway, so uh on that point, let's fly through some some numbers. There will be some some terms and stuff like that. But let's let's just go through this master list and then we can we can take any little tangent if you want to. But so our new listings uh are actually still still way up for the year. So we're we're at 697 new residences on the market in 2026 compared to 597 last year. So literally 100 more homes. Um our however, our pending sales down 2% for the year, but we're down 16% May over May. And I think that is the the warning sign that I'm I'm concerned about. You combine that with our closed sales that also are now negative. So two two important things, right? Uh, we're still up on closed sales compared to last year, but that slowdown has me concerned, especially since May, June, July, August are typically our good months in our upstate seasonal market. Um, I didn't highlight anything about days on market because I still think it's a little bit back and forth, and I think the numbers are just uh anyway, they didn't jump out to me as something that's worth noting at the moment. Our continued talking point is our regional and this is one that we've tried to kind of pull more from this singular information, but our average and median sale prices continue to go up. If you own a home in our area, you're you're in a great spot because just overall your your property value just continues to go up. Now, I I'm worried. I'm worried that this might not continue, and I think that there are I think this is just a little bit of a false data point. And I'm still trying to find exactly how I can proof this. But I do I think that essentially our our low price stock is almost tapped out, or at least it's slow, and our our high price stock is also slow, but it but you sell five nice houses and it's gonna really skew that that price a little bit. Um I think that's I think that's the truth because I don't think you're like our average sale price in May was 275. I think our average domestic unit can probably buy a $275,000 house, but it it's it's probably getting to be a a stretch. I don't know if I don't I don't have you know local economic data to back that up, but it just yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

It's it's very like you said, it is gonna be a case-by-case a lot of times too. There really is no blanket statement that speaks to the entire market. Because also in the last week, where I have these these buyers that are looking under like 150, I have three of them. All of a sudden, a whole bunch of houses came on 100,000, 99,000, 95,000, and they weren't complete wrecks. I was shocked to see that. I was like, that's what we've been waiting for, and they're they're going up. Um, and also I was shocked to see that they're still there. So I've got to get my people kind of in gear and moving. But then I saw that and I was like, dude, okay, so this is from week to week, it's changing as well, which is kind of interesting. And then I'm still seeing luxury properties go up, you know, 500 plus, still seeing that coming up and going up. And I don't know what those properties are doing. That's why that deeper dive into the price point is really an interesting conversation.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Well, we did that last month. If you ever want to go back to our our one from uh about a month ago, but uh the the take-home message at that point was in that 500 plus for around here, that's semi-luxury, or yeah, um definitely upper middle class and above. But anyway, there's there's way fewer things. That's where your your selection is huge if you're a buyer. There's so many available properties compared to how many are actually selling, it's incredible. There was like it was like 10% uh you know, uh 10 to 1 ratio of available versus versus closed. Um and a couple other things I wanted to point out here, just in the the data. So our our percent list price, again, correlating with slowing sales, correlating with slowing pendings is a reduction in list price. Not by a ton, but this is one I'm watching. We're down to ninety four point six percent for the year of list price, and that's getting to uh one of the lower numbers we've seen. Years around here.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

So I do feel like I've seen a lot of price reductions. I have seen that too. Price reductions.

SPEAKER_03 22:05

I can't in our MLS just I can't pull a specific stat on how many like active homes on the market right now have had price reductions. I wish I could. It's not one of our data polls I can do. But I would have loved to have been able to compare that to years past. And I think you're right. I think we're seeing every day I look in my market watch, you know, and I see price reductions. Price reductions are going up.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Well, that's why, again, like I try to price very conservatively. I know my seller wants $550 and we're not listings there. We are just not. So again, you know, having that being able to have that conversation about the true value, it's what a buyer's willing to pay for it. How do we put it out there? Understand as a seller, I'll speak to the homeowner briefly. When you sign an exclusive right to sell, right? Or we lovingly call the ERTS because we're too busy to say that mouthful of words, you're not selling your house at that moment. You're not signing a contract of sale. You're literally signing a marketing agreement. You're allowing the agent to market your property. That's what you're signing when you sign a listing agreement. And I think a lot of people put way too much stock and worry, and they take too much issue with this document where you can pull it off anytime you want, but it's let's market it. What am I allowed to market it for? Well, I want $550. Okay, well, I want to list it at $499. I just want to market it at $4.99 and drive the price up and see how close we can get to five. That's a strategy. So again, understand that you're putting a product out for sale the same way they put something out in Walmart, right? And everyone goes, why is Walmart like the number one place that people go and target? Because it's cheap, because people want to deal. So we're not giving your house away because you didn't sign a contract to sale. You can take it off the market if you don't get offers that you like, but you got to market it where you're gonna get the most traction, and then you do what you can. You got to have a good negotiator, but you then you do what you can to get those guys up.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

Yes, that's well said. Um, that's very well said. I don't have any, I can't add anything.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

I just want the seller to hear the homeowner, because we we your your house is your your greatest wealth asset. And I think as listing agents, as Rich said, we we kind of identify as listing agents, we want to protect your wealth and we want to protect property value as well. And then one small thing I want to say from before, like we, you know, being in Keller Williams, being a global entity and having you know offices all over the country, our northeast region has always had the lowest sale price in the entire company.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

And that our northeast, our northeast of New York. Is that what you mean?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah, correct. And that's I think a factor in why we have so much growth and have you know the seller market is still strong and it's still going up because people are finding that our area is still one of the last affordable areas. And what's gonna happen when they realize, oh, that's affordable, let's go that way, it becomes unaffordable. So we're seeing that transition now because people have found us, right? For a lot of reasons, people have found us and they're starting to buy here. So I've been waiting for that other shoe to drop, as they say, but we have been the lowest price point in the country, and we're not gonna be forever. So it's just something, an interesting uh point to be to be aware of.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

It is, it's it's a unique spot in in geography because we are in New York and a lot of people have strong opinions about New York State. Um you constantly hear about taxes, you hear about whatever New York State government is. It's affordable in the country. It's fine. It's fine. But at the same time, uh on that first slide, you know, national median home price right now is 417. Guess what? Upstate New York, where we are, our median right now, I'm looking at it right now, two 228 for the year. 228 is our median sale price. So uh, for a lot less than your average or your your median uh across the country.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Is it really 417? Just like a little side note.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

Like that is my median average.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

That is my uh good luck number, that is my indication number. That number shows up when it's important in my life. Cool.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

So just last last couple things to touch on. Um the um the now there's something called the housing affordability index, and I'm not gonna take the time to define this necessarily because I don't fully know it. I I talk about it ad nauseum, but it's an algorithm. It combines economic factors, inflation, interest rates, mortgage rates, uh the treasury yield, like a lot of stuff. It's it's just how much how does living life in America you know compare to buying a house in America, essentially. And it's been housing affordability index has been low for a while, and we're down nine, almost nine percent in May compared to last May, and we're down almost ten percent for the year compared to last year, which was already a difficult affordability year. So you got war going on, or at least recently going on, you've got um you know, mortgage rates that are still hovering in the mid-six six six point five percent range, you know, low sixes, mid-sixes. That's not easy for anyone to afford anything. No, or at least not your dream home. You know, you can afford something, but you're gonna have to concede on some fronts. Anyway, the bottom line is when your groceries and your gas and everything costs a lot, and buying a house costs a lot, that makes it less affordable. And that's where we're at. Uh and that's really that's really where I'm at. I I don't have like a dour opinion of the market right now, but our local market, I do feel like sellers are still being sold a a kind of a fairy tale a lot of the time. And and that's the onus is on the agent to to actually perform a real pricing analysis, to actually have a difficult conversation about look, you're hiring a real estate professional to help sell your home. By the way, there's a buyer that's also gonna be hiring their real estate professional to sell their home. And if you want to sell your home in a competitive market, we can get into this in maybe a different pod, Justin. You gotta be competitive to in to help induce that sale. And part of that is by helping to cover that agent's uh fees to their client, right? Because if you want to stand out, one of the ways to do it is to say, hey, I'll cover your costs and make it easy for you to buy my home. Um and I don't think agents are understanding that quite yet. A balanced market means you don't, as a seller, have all the power, you've got to think strategically.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Um and then I think too, then you get because uh a lot of times you get so just sorry, but we'll we'll we should talk about that because I think there's so many different um, you know, especially with the lawsuit, like, yeah, we've uncoupled the commission and you don't have to pay it. Sure, you don't have to pay it.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

You don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

And I think that as a homeowner right now, trying to protect again your asset, your wealth, what you're gonna net at the end of the day, you can be in control of it, right? Meaning, let's let's plan for it, let's set the amount, let's make it, you know, as aggressive as we can comfortably. Let's make sure it's competitive, let's make sure you know it incentivizes, especially in a tightening market. Um, and it's still at the end of the day your choice. So you can pick whatever strategy you want, and we're always going to advise you um get ahead of it, right? If you, if you what you have the right to do, say, I'm gonna put out zero, I don't care. Okay, well, then guess what? Offers are gonna come in with 3% anyway, 4%, 2%, whatever people want to charge you because they have the right to charge what they want. And now you're in this deadlock because you don't want to pay the buyer's agent anything, but the buyer probably doesn't want to pay their agent either because traditionally they haven't. So you just you just don't know. So I think my best advice to sellers is really always get ahead of it, plan for it, let's build it into your net. Then we know what the offers have to look like in order to make it a comfortable um closing cost. Because at the end of the day, the buyer writes the check anyway. The buyer's paying everything anyway. You're not paying for anything, you're not writing a check, you're getting a net check.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Misconceptions out there, even like, yeah, correct. Like, we get paid by the seller, but if the house doesn't sell from a buyer's paid, then we don't get paid. So it's not your money, you're not paying us, you're just paying us a little l, you're getting a little less of what you you know what I mean. And that's been the norm for like decades and decades. Uh there's nothing different happening, it's just you I just feel like conversations uh need to be had about exactly what you said. It's the net, it's what what can you walk away with? And by the way, when I run my true market comparables using MLS based data, 98% of MLS-based data has a buyer and a seller compensation built into that price. So I think it's important to say, hey, if I want to uh I don't want to go into a deep dive on like an exclusive right to sell right now, Jess, but you had mentioned earlier that it is essentially a marketing agreement, right? It's what it is. It has little little sections on can we put this thing on the internet? You know, can we put a sign out there? You know, are you okay with like the could the concept of concessions? And also, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

It doesn't say like funds for fail.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Are you willing to offer to offer to to cover the the buyer agency compensation? And again, you have every right to say, I'm not willing to at this time, but like the truth is when you kick the can down the road, we are gonna have to revisit that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

We definitely are gonna have to revisit that. Offers are gonna come in with requests. I mean, I know I write my offers like that. I write all my offers with my fee built right in. You know, this offer is not necessarily contingent. I think that's a really strong word because you know, the seller can always come back and say no. And, you know, if my buyer can't, you know, I mean, agents have to at the end of the day make, you know, a decision on, you know, what that fee looks like really in practice. And sometimes we, you know, we have to take less, or there's deals you get more on, there's deals deals you get less on. I think we we all need to be negotiable. We no one can really be rigid in this type of market. But again, it is being able to have a higher level net conversation when someone is ready to list a house. They have to know what they're gonna get because if they're not gonna get enough, there's you have no business even listing their house. You shouldn't even list their house. You need to be responsible in that way.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

Yep. Um, oh I just had a quick thought on that, and then it just it just rapidly disappeared.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

And it went away, evaporated. Do you guys hear the rooster?

SPEAKER_03 32:42

Totally. Yeah, but it's uh I'm still looking, I'm looking at the I haven't looked at you this whole pot. I'm looking at the document, so I'm sharing it. But uh I I hear this, it sounds like a delightful farmstead in the background.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

A delightful farmstead. I like that. Let's go with that. Everyone envision a delightful farmstead, not a rooster that lives in my mud room in a dog crate because my chickens got murdered on Christmas. Yeah, see, that's a glimpse into my life. So, what's the next number up?

SPEAKER_03 33:10

I've only had to pick pepper off my desk one time so far, too. My pepper is my cat.

unknown 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

No, but that's I think I I honestly I think that's our summary. I don't want to go too like the rest of this document just kind of goes into each of these small statistics a few more times. What did I what did I uh have that jumped out to me super quick? I'll summarize. So our new listing trend line is has been double-digit positive numbers, meaning new listings popping off ever since the last time we had a decrease in listings was November of 2025. So it's been whatever that is, uh I can't think months. It's like seven, eight months. I don't know of consistent, huge, huge new listing increases. That's what's supporting our inventory. Uh, what else stuffed out stuck out of me? Oh, three months in a row now. We're double digit negative in pendings. Three months in a row, Jess. It's not just one month. This is this is happening. Uh, we had a huge, we had a hugely positive January and February, which is inflating our numbers. But if you look at March, April, and May, we're down. Contracts are not being written at the clip that they've been written before. Uh it's it's starting to look a little scary. That's the indicator.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah, that's the indicator of a shifting market. That's future money right there.

SPEAKER_03 34:21

The closed.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

And we know anyway, just sorry, and we know anyway, just because I still get a little, I get a little bit um of a backdoor glimpse into the offices numbers and being almost 30% market share, you know, our market just at Keller is indicative of I I think a lot of times a market uh as a whole. We have new agents, we have seasoned agents, we kind of have everybody in between. Um, and I've been seeing that the actual company dollar has been way down since I think March was the last month. Um, so we were like really, you know, popping at the end of 2025. There was a lot of momentum. It's interesting, September and October have actually been the biggest months for the last few years. So I'm interested to see if we kind of rebound again and now start putting stuff on in the summer and then closing it up in September and October. Um, but it it has been it has been much lower these last few months too, which is which is not what we usually see.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

Yep. Yeah, our closed sales are are down this month for the first time in a while. The last time it was negative was September of 2025. So again, you're you're going back pushing pushing nine months for that. Um that's that same trend.