Ada County Housing Market, Week of August 31, 2026

Ada County, Idaho Market Pulse

Week of August 31 · from Luke Gilbert's team

This week's lean

The market held its breath this week.

Neither side gave much ground. Prices and pace stayed close to where they were last week.

What moved · resale · vs last week

The full board · vs last week

Signed = went under contract. Days = median time on market for listings, or median time to contract for signed. Exact figures in the story below.

Prices softened across the board this week, and it happened on both the new and resale sides at once. Active asking prices fell for both segments, and even the new construction pending number, which had been running high, gave back ground.

The one figure moving against that grain is resale pending price. That is the number I keep circling back to.

Existing homes

Resale asking prices eased to $621,997, down $5,962. There are 893 resale homes on the market, down 8. So slightly fewer homes for sale, priced a bit lower than last week.

The pending side told a different story. Resale homes going under contract came in at a median of $565,600, up $3,115. That is the rare price gain on the board this week. But the count of pending deals dropped hard, down 42 to 567. Fewer homes went under contract, at a firmer price. My read is that the deals still getting done are the well positioned ones, and the marginal buyers are stepping back as borrowing costs climb.

Pace still favors the resale side. Active resale listings have been sitting a median of 33 days, unchanged. The homes that went under contract did so in a median of 18 days, up 3. What buyers want still moves in under three weeks, though that window widened a touch this week.

New construction

New builds stayed the softer segment on price. Active new home asking prices slipped to $624,548, down $5,388. Builders added a little inventory, up 3 to 420 active listings. Those homes have been sitting a median of 65 days, up 4, which is roughly twice as long as resale sits before finding a buyer.

On the pending side, new build prices came in at $647,426, down $7,512, the largest price move I see this week. The count fell to 136, down 6. Those homes took a median of 52 days to go under contract, down 1. New construction pending prices are still running higher than resale pending prices, but that gap narrowed this week as builders trimmed their numbers. If I had to guess, builders are adjusting faster than resale sellers because they carry the cost of homes that sit.

The bigger picture

The 30-year fixed averaged 6.71% as of September 3, per Freddie Mac. That is the highest reading in over a year, and for a buyer looking at a $565,000 resale home in Meridian, that rate is the heaviest line in the monthly payment. A year ago the same buyer would have locked closer to 6.50%. That gap is small on paper and real in a monthly budget.

The pressure this week came from overseas. Renewed fighting in Iran pushed oil and the 10-year Treasury higher, and mortgage rates followed. Then the Fed meets September 16 with an updated dot plot. A hawkish signal there could nudge the 30-year toward 7% before fall inventory peaks. When rates climb, sellers do the adjusting, not buyers. You can see that in this week's active price cuts on both segments.

The resale pending price held up this week even as the deal count thinned. That is the tension I am sitting with. Either buyers keep paying firm for the right homes, or that thinner volume drags the price back down next month. It is too early for me to call which way it breaks.