The Twelve-Week Slowdown That Hit Some Local Markets Harder Than Others

Over the twelve weeks ending August 23, 2026, closings across Allen, Celina, Frisco, McKinney, Plano and Prosper fell below the same span a year earlier, but the wait for a buyer looks nothing alike from one of these markets to the next.

Something eased across this stretch of the northern Dallas suburbs this summer, and it did not ease the same way everywhere.

Homes still sold. Buyers still signed contracts and closed on schedule. There were just fewer of those closings than there were a year ago, and depending on which of these markets you're standing in, the wait for a buyer to show up looks almost nothing alike.

Across the territory, home sales closed at 2,787 in the twelve weeks ending August 23, 2026, down from 3,207 in the same twelve-week span a year earlier. That is not a small move. It is the kind of drop that shows up in open houses with fewer cars out front and in offers that take longer to land.

The pace of selling slowed with it. Median days on market across the territory ran 71 days this period, up from 66 days year over year. Five days does not sound like much until you are the seller waiting through it, or the buyer wondering whether to make a second showing before someone else does.

But the territory-wide number hides more than it shows. Break it apart by market and the slowdown stopped being one story.

In Prosper, the median time for a home to go under contract runs about 74 days. Supply there sits at roughly six months, the longest wait of anywhere in this report. A house here does not just take longer to sell than it used to. It takes longer than most of its neighbors across the territory are taking right now.

In Plano, the opposite is true. The median time to go under contract runs 39 days, with about three months of supply on the market, the shortest wait of anywhere in this report.

That gap is not a rounding error. It is the difference between listing a home and settling in for a slow summer, and listing a home and fielding an offer before the month is out, inside the same buy box, in the same twelve weeks.

Normally a territory-wide slowdown would suggest every market got a little more patient at the same time. That is not what happened here. One market got dramatically more patient. Another barely noticed anything changed.

For a seller in Prosper right now, that patience is the market, not a temporary lull. A six-month supply means real competition sitting on shelves next to any new listing, and a 74-day median means the offer is unlikely to arrive on the first weekend. Pricing for that reality from day one beats pricing for the market of a year ago and cutting later.

For a seller in Plano, the math still favors speed, but speed is not the same as leverage. A 39-day median and three months of supply means a well-priced home still moves, yet it also means a buyer has other options nearby if the price feels stretched.

For a buyer, the read flips by market too. Patience in Prosper means room to negotiate and time to think before writing an offer. Speed in Plano means showing up ready, because a home that fits is unlikely to sit.

What is worth watching from here is whether that six-month supply figure in Prosper keeps building or starts working itself down, and whether Plano's fast pace holds once more of this season's new listings finish closing. Either one would say more about where this is headed than this period's numbers can say on their own.

This report is built on MLS sold data at the ZIP level across the territory; Zillow independently verified the inputs before this was written.

Kelly