Weekly Special | January 5, 2026

2026 Finishes Stronger

For many years, my housing market analysis focused almost entirely on Leon County, and for a long time that approach worked. Leon County reliably reflected buyer demand, pricing trends, and overall market health. In 2026, that is no longer true, and continuing to analyze Leon County alone would produce misleading conclusions.

What the latest year-over-year home sales data shows is not a lack of demand, but a redistribution of demand. Affordability pressures inside Leon County have pushed buyers to expand their search areas. They have not left the market, they have adapted. As a result, focusing only on Leon County sales now understates true market activity and falsely suggests declining demand.

That is why my analysis is shifting to the Tallahassee Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes the counties across North Florida and parts of South Georgia. This broader view captures where buyers are actually purchasing homes today. It also reveals something important: housing growth is increasingly occurring outside Leon County, not because buyers prefer it, but because local policy decisions have made housing harder and more expensive to deliver inside the county.

Leon County’s continued lack of leadership on housing supply and affordability has consequences. Markets respond to policy. When housing is not treated as a priority, growth does not stop, it moves outward. The surrounding counties are absorbing that growth, and the year-over-year home sales data now clearly reflects it.

Looking ahead, this shift matters for homeowners, buyers, and investors. Understanding where demand is forming is more important than watching isolated county statistics. The Tallahassee market is evolving, and accurate analysis must evolve with it. My goal remains the same as always: to provide clear, honest insight into how the market is actually behaving, not how we wish it behaved.

This issue went with a longer report on our blog: read the full blog post. The original one-page Weekly Special PDF is still available.