2025 Recap and Start to 2026

Looking back at 2025 is a lot like looking at 2024 and 2023. The three years have been remarkably similar–more similar than most clusters of three years in my 23-year real estate career.

This month I explored many rabbit holes, looking to data to answer many questions. Why isn’t the Boise resale market moving much even though rates are down? Why aren’t older homeowners downsizing? Why aren’t more Boise homes transacting? Are more homes being cancelled? What is 2026 going to do?

With some digging and analysis, I have many thoughts to share. First, a look at 2025. How was it? Well, it was about like 2024. Which was a lot like 2023. I guess it was normal? Though a 10-year look-back shows sales volume for residential resale in Boise is still much lower than historic numbers.

Still, we did see a slight uptick for total homes sold in 2025 as compared to 2024 and 2023.

Average sold prices for homes closed in 2025 were slightly higher than in 2024 and 2023. Still, we’ve been hovering right around that $600,000 average sold price for residential resale in Boise for four years now.

Looking at the year by month, 2025 saw some fluctuations in pricing with peak sold prices in the months of July and August. I’d suspect this has a lot to do with larger, move-up homes transacting in the May-August timeframe, pulling those averages up during the summer months.

Looking at our average cumulative days on market shows that homes took a little longer to sell in 2025 compared to 2024, but still less than 2023. Cumulative Days on market helps us to see the total time it takes a home to sell if it was recently listed then cancelled. If a home doesn’t sell, and is subsequently cancelled and then re-listed, the total days it takes to sell is the Cumulative Days on Market.

Now let’s look at how 2026 is starting. It’s very early in the year with just one month of data for January and two weeks in February, but so far, I’d say things feel more brisk than last year. It could be the warm weather, it could be rates at nearly a full point lower than this time last year. We’ll need another 45 days of data before we can really tell how spring will likely unfold.

So far, looking at our count of pending sales by week, 2026 looks similar to the previous three years. Sound familiar? If I had to bet right this minute, I’d say that we’re looking at a year ahead that is similar to recent years. As long as the economy holds. And interest rates are stable. And we are not invaded by aliens from a galaxy far, far away. If any of those things change, all bets are off.

This shows pending volume by week, our first look at how 2026 is performing.

This next graph is maybe totally worthless, but let’s consider it for fun. For listings that listed in January that have CLOSED, average list to sold prices are way higher than previous years for January. Now, we only have sold data so far for homes that listed in January and then closed quickly. Once our pending sales that listed in January close, this number will drop. I did look at homes that listed in January, 2025 and closed in January or February 2025 and the numbers were not as strong as what we’re seeing so far in 2026.

This is a time of year when many sellers are asking, “when is the best time to list?” Generally speaking, a good time to list is when buyers are buying And while sold data is interesting, it doesn’t tell us when buyers are making their decisions–for this, I like to consider pending data. Looking at a three-year average of pending sales by week, there is a clear uptick in pending activity starting in week 16 (mid-April) that holds strong until week 27/28 (July 4 holiday). We see steady pending activity in July/August then a dip at Labor Day/start of school, and a bump right around the first week of October which is a popular week for travel for out-of-state buyers and of course, Boise is in all its glory. Pending sales drop week by week through year end and then jump after the first of the year.

Another way to answer the question, “When is the best time to list” is to look at how listings perform based on their listing week. One measure is the original price to sold price ratio. This is a three-year average for the years 2023, 2024, and 2025. List to sold prices have a peak for homes listed in the last week of March. There is an interesting bump in the last week of the year.

Lastly, looking at a three-year average of days on market by listing week, again we see that March/April/May timeframe as the most favorable for the year. Again we see a drop for that last week of December. I can’t really explain that other than there must be some motivated buyers in the marketplace that last week of the year along with a handful of plucky sellers. Who knew? Anyone who wants to try a December 29 listing in 2026, let me know.

Earlier I mentioned rabbit holes. Let’s talk about a fun one. I had been wondering if the reason that fewer sellers are listing homes and fewer buyers are buying had more to do with payments than prices, particularly for our move-up buyers.

To create these graphs, I deviated from my usual Boise resale data set and searched all of Ada County, all homes, both resale and new construction. I then looked at homes between 2400-3400 square feet, with at least 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a 3-car garage–that classic move-up home that buyers seek when they’ve outgrown their starter home. I then calculated an overall average price for this home type for each quarter and I researched the average mortgage rate to calculate an average payment assuming a 30-year fixed mortgage and 20% down payment. I also researched insurance rates and taxes to calculate a total payment vs the principal and interest.

It was really interesting to see how much insurance, in particular, has risen in the past five years. Notice how that gap between total payment and principal and interest payment have changed with that widening gap between the two, especially since 2022.

We see a payment peak in mid-2025, with principal & interest numbers heading toward a four year low. January, 2026 isn’t shown here, but those numbers are actually a bit stronger (lower payment) than December, 2025. This may impact move-up buyers and how they are thinking about potential upsizing in 2026. This is a group that has held off on an upsize. Meanwhile, the market (including downsizers) needs their entry-level homes. Downsizers and Upsizers have been in a bit of a staring contest–maybe this is a year that we start seeing some movement from these groups.

Still, it is kind of shocking to see the explosion in expected mortgage payment for move up buyers over a ten-year period. Buyers have been crying uncle for a while now. Without a larger influx of homes in the market, it’s hard to fathom prices falling. It would seem that we’re reaching “affordability” through gradual interest rate declines combined with wage increases–still, maybe we’re getting there slowly.

My last nugget of data for you is around cancelled listings. Last fall national reporting said that a record number of home sellers had pulled their homes off the market. I wondered if this was true locally. I tracked five years of cancelled or expired listings by month. We saw fluctuating cancellations in 2025 with an above-average number in March-August, then a stable fall, then a high number in December.

What is really interesting to me is looking back at 2022–boy did the jump interest rates impact home sellers that year! Otherwise, nothing alarming in terms of listing cancellations in Boise for 2025 or so far in 2026. We’ll keep an eye on it.

If you’ve read this far, send me an email. I honestly have no idea who actually reads these updates. I appreciate the visits. What data questions do you have? Send them my way and I’ll include them in a future post. Cheers! Andrea Pettitt andrea@boisegroup.com