Two Ways to Read This Market: Time on Market vs. What Actually Sold

There are two ways to read this market right now, and an agent picking just one is missing half the picture.

Option one: look at days on market. Across the territory, the median days on market ran 96 days. That is the slow read, the one that makes buyers think they hold all the leverage.

Option two: look at price. The median sold price across the territory came in at $348,000. That is the number that tells sellers they are still getting paid.

Put those two side by side and neither one wins outright. Homes are sitting for three months, on average, before going to contract. But the price they eventually fetch has held up. That is the tension worth sitting with: a slower clock has not meant a softer number.

Here is where it gets local. In Calabash, median days on market ran 111 days this period, down from 133 days the same window a year earlier. So even the slowest market in the territory got faster, not slower, than it was a year ago.

In Longs, the sale-to-list percentage rose to 98.8%, up from 98.2% the same window a year earlier, which means the gap between what sellers asked and what buyers paid actually narrowed.

In North Myrtle Beach, days on market fell to 98 days, down from 111 days the same window a year earlier. In that same market, the sale-to-list percentage rose to 97.7%, up from 97.1% the same window a year earlier.

So which reading should a homeowner trust: the calendar or the closing price? Here is a third thing worth putting next to both. Among sold homes across the territory, homes with air conditioning spent a median of 86 days on the market, compared with 102 days for homes without it. That is not a seasonal footnote. That is a 16-day gap tied to one feature, inside a dataset where the overall median already ran 96 days.

Score the two readings against what actually matters to a person making a decision. On speed: the days-on-market number favors buyers, who get more time to think before making an offer. On price: the median sold figure favors sellers, who are still closing near their number. On leverage at the table: Calabash's median sold price rose 5.04% year over year, a gain sellers there are still capturing. On the amenity question: air conditioning is not a nice-to-have, it is a 16-day swing.

So who wins this side-by-side? For a seller in Calabash sitting on a home without central air, the days-on-market column is the one to worry about, not the price column, because the 102-day figure for homes without air conditioning is the one closer to that home's likely path. For a buyer touring the territory broadly, the price column is the one that matters, because $348,000 is what buyers are actually paying regardless of how long a given listing sat.

What to watch next: whether that 86-versus-102-day air conditioning gap holds as more of this period's sales get logged, and whether Calabash's rising median price keeps pace with the rest of the territory. Those two threads, read together, will say more about where this market goes than either the calendar or the price tag alone.

MLS sold data, twelve weeks ending August 30, 2026. Bill Sullivan