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AUGUST, 2026 REAL ESTATE ACTIVITY
SUMMARY
We can echo last month’s statement that the local mountains realty market is healthy in general, and in most individual parts of the area too. Inventory continues to creep upward, as do residential average prices. The sales ratios may be telling us that initial list pricing is becoming more realistic, which may (and should) help the sales pace a little bit. As for the counties individually, it’s a typically mixed bag. Fannin continues to shine, while Towns has been a little slow on sales units, but prices have been strong. Cherokee and Clay have been like ying and yang. Cherokee has had slow sales but really nice prices. Clay has had great unit sales growth, but prices have disappointed . Gilmer is still sluggish on both units and prices, but isn’t losing ground at least. And Union seems to be breaking upward a bit overall the last couple of months. Acreage sales strangely were very slow in July and in August, but prices in August jumped upward. But with so few sales (5), it’s hard to call anything a trend. Still, that will be interesting to watch for September and the rest of the fall.
1. ACTIVE LISTINGS: There were 4,327 active listings in August, which is about 60 more than last month, and 316 more than last August 2025. This makes 8 straight months of growth in listing inventory, so, there is plenty to buy in this area. As we said before, until buyer demand improves we can expect a continuation of the upward drift in quantity of properties available. The unsold inventory is still only about 2/3rds of what it was in 2019, but we’ve basically been building it back up since 2020.
2. OPEN CONTRACTS (PENDINGS): The number of open contracts (“pendings”) increased from 539 in July to 563 in August. However, that means the last 8 months contained 4 months of ups and 4 months of downs in random order. So there is definitely no trend there of either growth or shrinkage in the pace of sales this year. Just eyeballing it, it looks to me like we are trending slightly slower than 2024 but slightly better than last year 2025.
Side Note: Since I’ve been hearing and reading that there are more cancellations of contracts these days, I did just a quick calculation, hoping it to be valid, and compared the closing rate of pending contracts last year to those this year so far. I added all sales closed, and divided that by the total number of contracts in force over the year. The result was that last year (full 2025) only 55.5% of contracts actually closed. In 2026 so far, 57.5% have closed. So, while I am surprised at the low proportion of contracts that make it to closing, it appears the reported trend of higher cancellations either hasn’t hit our area or was just imaginary anyway. And, I can tell you just from experience and observation that clients of Coldwell Banker High Country experience a much, much higher closing rate.
3. SALES:
Units: The number of actual sales closed in August (323) decreased for the first time in seven months. The August number was 8% lower than last year and 12% lower than in July. Not to worry too much though, a blip in a seven month trend isn’t too unexpected, and at this point we are 73 sales ahead in total than we were at this point in 2025. The counterbalance to that optimism, which is a bit concerning, is that the 323 closings in August was the slowest August since 2013!
Dollars and Average Price: The total sales dollars in August was roughly $147.7 million. In concert with unit sales, the total dollars sold was 7% less than last year and 13% less than last month. The average price per transaction though is strong and still holding firm. At $457,194 for August, it is just slightly below July’s $462K average, but is higher than August of 2025’s $450K. It is also significantly higher than the full 2025 year’s average of $413K.
4. RATIOS: The ratios in August were changed enough to warrant comment. For August the Sales/List Price came in at 95.85%, noticeably higher than 94.01% in July, and the highest percentage in a year and a half. And the Sales/Original price ratio dropped to 90.97% from July’s 92.31%. If I may, I would say that these divergent numbers seem to indicate that sellers and listing agents are reducing their unreasonable original prices down to a much more accurate representation of true market value. This is an important observation in that the market isn’t helped by unreasonably high list prices, even if later reduced to lower, but still too high list prices.
5. DAYS ON MARKET: In a demonstration of true stability, the “Days on Market” came in at 112, which is exactly the middle of the 113 and the 111 of the prior two months. For reference, last year’s average DOM for the entire year was 118. So the August number looks fairly good … not wonderful … but fairly good, and is stable.
6. COUNTY-BY-COUNTY:
Cherokee County, NC: Last month Cherokee’s sluggish sales pace didn’t improve as they turned in 35 closings in August vs 38 in July. For reference, the average month in 2025 delivered almost 40 (~ 39.7) closings. So Cherokee appears to be running about 12%-13% behind last year’s sales pace. However, for no known reason the average price surged to $343,422, which is the second highest average price ever, behind December 2025. There was only one sale of the 35 that was over $1mm (~ $1.35 mm) and so the rebound in average price was not due solely to unusually large sales.
Clay County, NC: As we’ve observed, Clay County is having a pretty good year. Through July, Clay was running 12.5% ahead of last year, and August didn’t disappoint as it registered 30 sales vs 27 in August of 2025. Given that last year’s average was just 22.6, it’s obvious that it’s a good year we have going in Clay. Uh oh though, Clay has not been as impressive on it’s average price, so let’s see if it began to rectify that in August… . The short answer is “nope”. The average price actually sagged more in August to $256,877 from July’s $287,121. This is well below the July 2025 level, and also below the 2025 average of $330K+.
Fannin County, GA: Interestingly, and happily, Fannin County is also having a better 2026 in unit sales than 2025. The August sales closed were 75, which beat July (70) but was less than August 2025 (79). Overall, Fannin is running at a 69.25 average in monthly closings compared to 68.4 over all of 2025. So, thankfully the pace is up, although not impressively. We’ll just say “up is up”, and we’ll take it. In July we saw Fannin’s average price basically blowout to $787,752, but in August it settled down almost drastically to $634,294. While this is a big drop, it really brings that average price back to much more “normal” levels. And, that normal even looks good when compared to the overall 2025 average price of $615K. So I think we’re good in Fannin.
Gilmer County, GA: A month ago Gilmer had a nice July with 87 closings and finally eclipsed 2025 to that point, but in August Gilmer had just 70 closings which lands right at the overall 2025 average of 69.6 per month. Gilmer started the year running behind, and has accelerated as the year has progressed, at least it had until August. Let’s hope this August number turns out to be either just a leveling off or a breather before heading upward again. The troubling thing is that the average price has been waffling. In August though it came in at $382,462, better than a relatively down July number. This leaves Gilmer at roughly the same average price this year as last year (around $393K – $395K). So for now, it looks like Gilmer has really not lost momentum, but has also not progressed with more closings or increased prices.
Towns County, GA: Towns County closed only 18 sales in August, which was poor by most any view. That was 10 fewer than July, and about half the August 2025 count. It is even poor by comparison to the overall 2025 average of 26.5. So we are left wondering what happened, or didn’t happen, in Towns County in August. Now let’s talk about the average price. So far this year it has been a point of pride. On first look, August wowed us even more with a big average price number of $557,414. That was a huge beat of July’s $420K and last August’s $414K, but then digging deeper I discovered that one of the August sales in Towns County was at a sale price of $3.475 million. With only 18 total sales, this ONE had a major upward impact. If we carve out that one sale, the average price of the others drops from $557K to a more normal $386K. Given that the overall average price was $371K, this is still a good number for August. Happy days in Towns County, at least if we can get the pace of sales back up in September.
Union County, GA: Union County had broken out last month with 69 sales, with 56 sales closed in August it is now only a return to a more normal neighborhood. Still, the 56 sales compares very favorably to the overall 2025 average of 49. So, Union may truly be still breaking out, just not as dramatically. Prices in Union County have on balance been higher this year than last, so the August average price of $359,207 is appropriately about 4.25% above the whole 2025 average of $344.5K.
7. RESIDENTIAL: In August the average home price was $576,155, which is almost exactly the same as July at $576,434. These are very good numbers, and are at a record high level except for last December’s $592K. August’s $576,155 compares well to last August’s $557K and to the 2025 overall average of $521K. So, fast market or slow, mountain home prices march on gracefully and steadily upward.
8. ACREAGE UNIT SALES AND PER ACRE PRICE: (Includes only plain acreage, not lots, lake, commercial, etc: just “raw land”.) The number of acreage sales transactions in both July and August came in at only 5, which is a noticeable drop from earlier months this year and from the overall 2025 average of 11 per month. However – – hold the phone – – the average price per acre jumped from under $15K to it’s highest level this year at $18,501. Compare that to the 2025 average price of $10K per acre, and you have a “wow” factor. Don’t count on this number holding up the rest of the year, but it’s a great bump for now.
