October 2026 North Texas Housing Market Update: Collin, Denton & Grayson Counties
Collin, Denton, and
Grayson Counties by Price Range
Where did all the buyers go?
That may sound dramatic, but the pending-sale numbers are hard to ignore.
Across every price range we track in Collin, Denton, and Grayson counties, fewer homes went under contract than during the same period last year.
Does that mean buyers have disappeared? Not exactly.
Some price ranges still have relatively limited inventory. Others are giving buyers considerably more choices. In a few categories, the homes that did sell actually moved faster than they did a year ago.
The more interesting story may be that buyers are becoming more selective about which homes are worth saying yes to.
That matters whether you are buying or selling.
If you are a seller, fewer competing listings may sound encouraging—but what if buyer activity has fallen even faster?
If you are a buyer, more inventory may create opportunity—but is the property really a good value once you consider condition, repairs, taxes, insurance, incentives, and monthly payment?
That is why broad labels such as “buyer’s market,” “seller’s market,” or even “slow market” rarely tell you enough.
The more useful question is: What is happening with homes like yours, in your price range, in the area where you actually want to buy or sell?
The charts below use the most recent completed monthly MLS data available through North Texas Real Estate Information Systems, Inc. (NTREIS), covering September 2026 and available as of October 1, 2026, with year-over-year percentage comparisons.
Closed sales reflect contracts negotiated several weeks earlier. Pending sales give us a more current look at what buyers are choosing now—which makes them especially important this month.
Collin County
Market Update by Price Range
Denton County
Market Update by Price Range
Grayson County
Market Update by Price Range
What Changed Since Last Month?
Some changes happen quickly.
Others become important because they do not change.
Collin County under $400,000 is the clearest example of the first.
Pending sales went from being up 8.4% year over year in the previous report to down 38.6% now, while inventory stayed relatively tight.
Grayson County at $500,000 and above is the opposite.
Inventory moved only slightly, from 11.5 months to 11.7 months.
That tells us the challenge there is persisting rather than appearing suddenly.
And Grayson County under $250,000 gives us another useful lesson.
Last month, closed sales still looked strong while pending sales had already started weakening. Now both measures have moved lower.
That is why we pay attention to more than one statistic—and why pending activity can sometimes tell us where the market is heading before closed sales catch up.
What the Three
Counties Reveal Together
If there is one word I would use to describe the current market, it is selective.
Not absent. Not desperate. Not universally in control. Selective.
A seller with a well-maintained home in a price range with limited inventory should not use the same strategy as a seller competing in a segment with seven, nine, or nearly twelve months of supply.
The same is true for buyers. A home that is priced well, shows beautifully, and has little direct competition may require a very different approach from one sitting in a price range with months of available inventory and several comparable choices.
So the question is not simply:
“What is the North Texas market doing?”
It is:
“What is the market doing around this particular property?”
That is where the useful answer begins.
The same caution applies when looking at list-to-sale percentages. A home may sell close to its final list price after earlier reductions, or the seller may contribute toward closing costs, repairs, an interest-rate buydown, a home warranty, or other negotiated expenses. A 95% or 96% list-to-sale ratio does not automatically mean buyers had little negotiating room.
Sometimes the negotiation happened before the contract. Sometimes it happened elsewhere in the contract. And sometimes the home was positioned well enough that the buyer simply did not need to push very far.
Context matters.
County statistics can help us understand direction, but they cannot tell us exactly what an individual home should be priced at.
For that, we need to know what buyers are actually choosing in the neighborhood and price range. Which homes are going pending? Which ones are sitting? Where are price reductions happening? How does the condition compare? Are nearby builders offering incentives?
And perhaps the most important question for a seller is:
If a buyer has several reasonable choices, why would they choose yours?
We can give you an honest, property-specific look at your home—where it is likely to compete well, where buyers may push back, and whether there are issues worth addressing before you put it on the market.
And if you are not ready to make a move, that is okay too.
Sometimes the smartest decision is to watch before acting.
We can set up a Neighborhood Market Watch so you can follow new listings, price changes, pending sales, and recent closings in the neighborhood or area that actually matters to you.
You do not need to make a decision today.
Sometimes watching the right information for a little while makes the right decision much easier to see.
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