You have probably heard both versions. One headline says Rochester is cooling. Another says homes are selling for 20 percent over asking. Both were published in the same month, about the same city.

They cannot both be right. This post walks through the five metrics that actually decide whether a market favors buyers or sellers, tells you exactly where each number lives, and shows you what the most recent Greater Rochester figures say. I will also flag where the data is thin, because pretending otherwise helps nobody.

Why do two sources say opposite things about Rochester?

Because they are measuring different geographies with different methods, and some of them are measuring the wrong Monroe County entirely.

Here are four published figures for the City of Rochester, all for July 2026:

Source	Median	Days on market	Sales	Other
Houzeo	$230,000 (+17.95% YoY)	51	509 (+78.6% YoY)	0.33 months supply; 120.57% of asking
Movoto	$199,000	13	643	Reported as "up from" 707 a year earlier
Resideline	$255,000	Not reported	Not reported	56 active, 68 pending
Zillow (ZHVI, approx. June 30, 2026)	$252,192 average value (+4.3%)	n/a	n/a	Automated valuation, not sales

That is a $56,000 spread on the same city in the same month. One source reports 51 days on market, another reports 13. One shows 56 active listings, another implies roughly 169.

There is a second trap. Search "Monroe County months of supply" and you will find a tidy 2.8 months alongside a $318,500 median. That page is describing Monroe County, Pennsylvania, in the Poconos. Other results describe Monroe, New York, in Orange County, near Goshen and Warwick, with a $510,000 median. Neither has anything to do with us.

Metric one: months of supply

Months of supply is active listings divided by the number of homes selling per month. It answers one question: if nothing new came on the market, how long until we ran out?

• Roughly 5 to 6 months is the widely used balanced benchmark.
• Below that favors sellers.
• Above that favors buyers.

For July 2026, Houzeo published 0.33 months supply for the City of Rochester. Take that as directional rather than precise, given that its implied active count and Resideline's 56 active listings for the same month cannot both be true. I could not locate a current Monroe County months of supply figure from a Rochester-area source, and I am not going to invent one.

Where to find it: the Greater Rochester Association of Realtors monthly report at grar.org, or an MLS export from your agent filtered to your town and price band. Public aggregators are the least reliable place to get this particular number.

Metric two: closed sales measured against new listings

This is the cleanest signal we have for Monroe County, and it comes from association data rather than a scraper.

Per NYSAR figures reported in late June 2026, for May 2026 in Monroe County:

• New listings: 844, against 853 in May 2025. Essentially flat.
• Closed sales: 512, down 17.6 percent year over year.

Read those together. Sales fell sharply while the flow of new listings held steady. A market where buyers are retreating shows falling sales and lengthening inventory. A market where sales fall while listings stay flat is short on product. GRAR president Don Simonetti Jr. described the price plateau as arriving when the gap between available listings and buyer demand narrows, which has not happened yet.

Where to find it: GRAR monthly releases and NYSAR county reports. Note the lag. As of late August 2026, May 2026 was the newest association data available for Monroe County.

Metric three: days on market

Days on market is the tiebreaker when price data gets noisy. A common rubric, and the one Houzeo publishes on its own Rochester page, runs like this: under 45 days is a seller's market, 45 to 70 is balanced, over 70 favors buyers.

Houzeo's own July 2026 figure for Rochester was 51 days, which lands in its own "balanced" bucket while the rest of that page describes a frenzy. Movoto reported 13 days for the same city and month. In Fairport, Movoto reported a median of 7 days in both May and June 2026, down 12 percent year over year, and Homes.com reported a 12 day average over the trailing twelve months against 58 days nationally.

When you see a 4x gap between two sources, ask which one is counting relists, expired listings and off-market days.

Metric four: sale to list price ratio

This is the percentage of asking price that homes actually close at. Above 100 percent means buyers are competing. Below means sellers are negotiating.

Houzeo reported 120.57 percent of asking for the City of Rochester in July 2026. Treat that with suspicion. A market where the average home closes 20 percent over asking does not also average 51 days on market, and both numbers appear on the same page. If the true figure were anywhere near 120 percent, appraisal gaps would be the dominant story in every offer, and they are not.

Where to find it: your agent's MLS export is the only trustworthy source here, because it can show you sale to list ratio for your town, your price band and your property type rather than a city-wide blend.

Metric five: median sale price, measured over twelve months

Price is the metric everyone quotes and the one most easily distorted. Two rules make it usable.

First, never blend list price with sale price. Monroe County's median sale price was $308,500 in May 2026, a record, up 7.9 percent from $286,000 in May 2025, and above the previous record of $300,000 set in June 2025. Realtor.com's median list price for the county in the same month was $319,900. Those are different measurements of different things.

Second, in small towns, use a trailing twelve month median. Fairport is the case study. Redfin reported a May 2026 median of $349,791, down 23.1 percent year over year. Homes.com's trailing twelve month median over roughly the same window was $380,000, up 1 percent. Movoto's median list price went from $507,000 in May 2026 to $389,000 in June. Fairport did not lose a quarter of its value in a month. A village-sized market produces double digit swings off a handful of closings, and that is mix shift, not a crash.

How do you tell if it is a seller's market where you actually live?

Run all five metrics for your town and your price band, not for the metro. Rochester real estate market conditions are not uniform across Henrietta, Pittsford, Brighton, Mendon, Rush and Honeoye Falls, and no public aggregator covers the smaller towns credibly. There simply are not enough monthly sales in Mendon or Rush for a scraper to produce a meaningful median.

The practical sequence:

1. Pull months of supply for your town from MLS data, not a website.
2. Compare closed sales to new listings over the last twelve months.
3. Check median days on market, filtered to your price band.
4. Check sale to list ratio for closed sales only.
5. Use a trailing twelve month median price, and ignore any single month percentage.

If four of the five point the same direction, you have your answer. If they scatter, you are in a genuinely mixed market and the answer depends on your specific price point.

What about mortgage rates?

Rates are context, not one of the five. Freddie Mac's 30 year fixed averaged 6.65 percent in the week ending August 20, 2026, easing from 6.67 percent on August 13 and 6.69 percent on August 6. A year earlier it was 6.58 percent. The 15 year averaged 5.95 percent.

That is a 7 basis point move over twelve months. As an illustration on a $308,500 purchase with 20 percent down, the principal and interest difference between 6.58 and 6.65 percent runs about $11 a month. Rates are not what is moving this market. Inventory is.

Common questions

Is Greater Rochester a buyer's market or a seller's market right now?

On the association data available, it still tilts toward sellers. Monroe County's median sale price set a record $308,500 in May 2026, up 7.9 percent year over year, while closed sales dropped 17.6 percent and new listings held flat at 844. Falling sales with flat listings indicates a shortage of homes to buy, not softening demand.

What months of supply counts as a balanced market?

Roughly 5 to 6 months of supply is the standard balanced benchmark. Below that, sellers hold the leverage. Above that, buyers do. I could not verify a current Monroe County months of supply figure from a Rochester-area source, so ask for an MLS-derived number for your specific town rather than trusting a national website.

Why do Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com show different Rochester prices?

They measure different things over different geographies. Zillow's ZHVI is an automated valuation of all homes, not a record of sales. Realtor.com's county figure is a list price. Redfin and the smaller aggregators report sold medians from varying samples that may or may not match city limits. For July 2026 in the City of Rochester, four sources produced medians ranging from $199,000 to $255,000.

Should I wait for rates to fall before buying in Monroe County?

The rate math is currently small relative to the price math. The 30 year fixed sat at 6.65 percent in the week ending August 20, 2026, against 6.58 percent a year earlier, a difference worth roughly $11 a month on a median-priced Monroe County home with 20 percent down. Over that same year the county median sale price rose 7.9 percent.

Did Fairport prices really drop 23 percent?

Almost certainly not. Redfin reported a 23.1 percent year over year decline for May 2026, but Homes.com's trailing twelve month median for the same period was up 1 percent at $380,000. A village-sized market swings wildly when a few large or small sales close in one month. Use twelve month figures for Fairport and similar towns.

If you want the real numbers for your street, your price band and your timeline, I will pull them from the MLS and walk you through what they mean, including the parts that argue against moving right now. Book a time with me here.

About this data

The figures in this post were compiled from publicly available sources including Houzeo, Movoto, Zillow, FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) and the Rochester Business Journal, along with other public market data. Real estate numbers change quickly, and these were accurate as of August 2026. For current figures on a specific home, street, or town, ask me directly rather than relying on a published average.

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