A number is circulating right now: new listings in Rochester down 43.87 percent year over year for July 2026, sourced to the listing site Houzeo. If you are thinking about selling in Henrietta, Brighton or Honeoye Falls this fall, someone has probably already used it on you. Less competition. List now. Move fast.

I want to walk you through what that figure actually says, what it cannot say, and the specific questions I would ask before I let it change your timing. By the end of this you will know what a base effect is, why one month of year over year housing data is the shakiest kind of evidence there is, and which report to open instead.

One thing up front, because I would rather lose your business than mislead you. I could not independently verify a single one of the figures in this post. They come to me as claims with a source attached. I am going to tell you exactly which ones I checked, which ones failed a basic arithmetic test, and which ones I have no value for at all.

What down 43.87 percent actually says

Strip the decimal places off and the claim is simple. In July 2026, the number of homes newly listed for sale ran at roughly 56 percent of the July 2025 level. That is the whole content of the figure. It is a ratio between two months.

Notice what it does not tell you:

• How many homes were newly listed. A percentage with no count underneath it can describe a swing of thousands or a swing of forty.
• What geography. "Rochester" in aggregator data sometimes means the city, sometimes the metro, sometimes something in between. The city and Monroe County are not the same market, and neither one is Honeoye Falls.
• Whether July 2025 was normal. This is the important one.

The base effect, in plain English

Every year over year figure has two ends. Sellers stare at the current end. The prior year end is doing just as much work, and nobody checks it.

Suppose last July was unusually busy. A wave of sellers who had waited out higher rates all decided to list in the same four weeks. Nothing about this July has to be weak for the comparison to look brutal. The denominator was inflated, so the percentage collapses. That is a base effect: a statistic that describes the past more than the present.

It runs the other way too. Compare against a month when almost nobody listed and you can manufacture a boom out of a flat market. This is why I do not take a single month of year over year housing data seriously on its own. A drop that steep in one month is a flag to go look at the comparison month, not a conclusion.

So the first question about the 43.87 percent figure is not "is it accurate." It is: what was the raw new listing count in July 2025, and was that month itself unusual? Until someone answers that, the percentage is a headline with no floor under it.

The other numbers going around, and where each one stands

The 43.87 percent figure arrived alongside several others. Here is the honest ledger.

Why 0.33 months of supply does not survive arithmetic

Months of supply is active listings divided by monthly closed sales. Run the claim backwards. If 169 active listings equals 0.33 months of supply, the implied sales pace is about 512 closings a month, or roughly 6,145 a year, in whatever "Rochester" means here. For the city on its own, that pace is high enough to question.

Put the same arithmetic against the standard 5 to 6 month benchmark for a balanced market and a balanced market would need somewhere around 2,561 to 3,073 active listings. The gap between 169 and 2,500 plus is not a tight market. It is a definitional problem. Most likely the listing count is a partial or lagged snapshot, or the listings and the sales are being pulled from two different geographies.

I am not telling you inventory is comfortable. I am telling you 0.33 should not be repeated as a fact, and any agent who quotes it to you has not divided one number by the other.

Over asking and 51 days cannot both mean what they look like

Homes that sit for 51 days do not usually close at 120 percent of list. Something has to give.

The likely answer is boring and definitional. Aggregators measure days on market differently. Some count list date to contract date, which is real market exposure. Others count list date to closing date, which bundles in a 30 to 45 day financing and escrow period. If that 51 is list to close, the actual exposure might be a week or two, and a strong over ask ratio stops being a contradiction.

I cannot confirm which definition applies without reading that aggregator's methodology page. So I will not claim the reconciliation. I will only say this: before you accept any days on market figure, ask what the clock was measuring. It changes the meaning completely.

What I have for Henrietta, Brighton and Honeoye Falls

Nothing published, and I would rather say so plainly.

I retrieved no town level figures for Henrietta, West Henrietta, Pittsford, Brighton, Mendon, Rush or Honeoye Falls: no median sale price, no days on market, no active listing counts. That is partly a data availability problem. These towns close a modest number of homes in any given month, so a single month's median can swing on a handful of sales, and months of supply and sale to list ratio often go unpublished at that level because the sample is too small to report responsibly.

When I do quote town numbers, I use rolling three month or twelve month figures and I label them as such. I do not hand you a Monroe County number with a town name stapled to it.

The report to open, and how to read it

For a listing decision in this part of the county, the GRAR monthly report from the Greater Rochester Association of Realtors is the closest thing to primary data, because it comes from the local MLS and is the source most likely to break out individual towns. County level figures from the New York State Association of Realtors are the other place I go first. Aggregator sites are secondary. Where they disagree with the MLS, the MLS wins and the discrepancy gets mentioned.

When you read it, do this:

• Write down the geography and the reporting month for every figure. Most of the confusion in this whole story traces back to missing geography labels.
• Look at the raw counts, not just the percentages.
• Check the prior year month before you accept any year over year change.
• Pull three or four months in a row. One month is noise.
• Note that August 2026 figures are not published yet. Monthly reports land one to two weeks after month end, so August closes out in early to mid September.

When to list a home in Monroe County this fall

Here is the part the percentages will not decide for you. Whether now is the right time to sell has less to do with a county wide ratio than with your specific house: the condition of the roof and the mechanicals, whether the kitchen reads current or dated, how your lot compares to the last three that sold on your street, and what a buyer walking through will actually notice in the first ninety seconds.

I spent years buying, fixing and reselling houses before I got licensed. That work teaches you to look at a house the way a buyer with a home inspector looks at it. That assessment is specific to your address, and it is more useful to you than any headline percentage.

If competition really is thin this fall, that is a genuine advantage, and I want it working for you. I just want to know it is true first.

If you are weighing a fall listing in Henrietta, Brighton, Honeoye Falls or anywhere nearby, book a time with me. I will pull the town level numbers I can actually source, show you the reporting period on each one, tell you where the data runs out, and walk your house with you. No figure I cannot back up.

Khem Kadariya, Sold By Khem

About this data

The figures in this post were compiled from publicly available sources including Houzeo, Zillow, RochesterFirst, Movoto and Redfin, 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.