Elizabeth keeps the numbers on a legal pad. The name is the one we always use. The situation is real and the person stays private. She has a house in East Canton, off East Cherokee Drive, and she has been tracking what sells around her the way some people track the weather. When we sat down, she slid the pad across the table and asked what the pad could not answer: “So is it a good market or a bad one?”
It is neither. It is two markets, and your price decides which one you are in. Below $600,000, the county still leans toward sellers. Above it, supply is building, and the line up there is slower than the one at $450,000 a few streets over. That is the problem. Here is the other half. In August, 109 homes above $600,000 sold in this county, and what they had in common was not the row. They were priced against what the buyer was actually touring, and they were ready on day one. The row decides the plan. It does not decide the ending.
Before the table, the feeling. There is a specific unease in reading that “the market cooled” when your house is the biggest thing you own, like standing in a store and not being sure which line you are in. And a quieter one when the neighbor’s house sells in a weekend and yours is not even listed. Both are reasonable. Neither is information. The table is, and every row on it has a way through.
Which market is my house in?
Here is the county as of September 6, 2026, from the Cherokee Association of Realtors. The last column is months of supply. It answers one question: if nobody listed another house tomorrow, how many months would August’s pace of sales take to sell everything already listed? Four to six months is called balanced. Under that, sellers have the wind. Over it, buyers do.
| Price range | For sale | Sold in August | Months of supply |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $300K | 44 | 19 | 2.3 |
| $300K to $400K | 240 | 75 | 3.2 |
| $400K to $500K | 295 | 75 | 3.9 |
| $500K to $600K | 191 | 76 | 2.5 |
| $600K to $700K | 161 | 46 | 3.5 |
| $700K to $800K | 136 | 29 | 4.7 |
| $800K to $900K | 77 | 12 | 6.4 |
| $900K to $1M | 50 | 6 | 8.3 |
| Over $1M | 193 | 16 | 12.1 |
Read it like two checkout lines at the same store. The lane between $300,000 and $600,000 is the express lane. The county sold 226 homes there in one month, almost two thirds of everything that closed, and supply is still on the seller’s side of balanced. At $600,000 and above, the line slows. There are 617 homes for sale and 109 sold, which is 5.7 months of supply, about half a school year. Above $1 million, 193 homes are asking and 16 found a buyer, after an average of 78 days, a full school year of supply plus the summer.
From row to row, only the price changes, and the price changes how many houses a buyer is choosing between. So the work in the slow line is not waiting. It is being the house those buyers pick when they reach the front.
Why am I showing you county numbers for an East Canton question?
Because those are the numbers measured and published every month, and East Canton sits inside them. The street-level read comes from a separate report, and we pull it by area when a seller asks. The county sets the weather. Your street sets the forecast. Start with the weather.
What is selling, and what is sitting?
Two clocks. The 354 homes that sold in August had been listed a median of 27 days, about one power-bill cycle. The 1,386 still for sale had been waiting a median of 51 days, a school kid’s whole summer. The gap between those clocks is the gap between two prices: the one buyers pay this year, and the one they paid in 2022. The normal timeline here has not changed much. What changed is how many houses are priced outside it. And a price is the one thing about a house that can be fixed in an afternoon.
Prices leveled. The August median of $500,500 is about $14,500 under August of last year, a decent used car. Against a 2017 median of $245,882, the county has a little more than doubled and then paused for breath. Inventory is up about ten percent from a year ago, one more house for sale on every street of ten. Buyers have choices again, and at every price, they pay for the house they do not have to fix, and they quietly skip the one they do. Read that as good news: you decide which of those two houses yours is, and you decide it before the sign goes up.
What are the fears, and which ones are real?
Elizabeth’s pad had three questions in the margin, the ones I hear most.
“I am above $600,000, so I am stuck.” You are in the slower line, not a closed one. The 109 homes that sold above $600,000 in August stood in your line. What set them apart was the plan, not the row.
“I should wait for the September numbers.” They land in early October and will change the details, almost certainly not the shape. A seller waiting for the next report is usually waiting for permission. Reports do not give it. A plan does.
“East Canton is different.” Some streets are, in both directions. That is what the area report answers. The county table tells you your line. The street report tells you how it is moving on your side of town.
What does this mean for an East Canton seller above $600,000?
Three things. First, price against what the buyer at this level is actually touring. In East Canton that often means new construction, not the neighbor’s sale from last year. Second, have the file ready before the first showing: roof age, HVAC service, permits, survey. Third, market actively, because this buyer is reached, not stumbled upon. Why houses above $600,000 in Canton sit longer walks through all three. The upper end of the county this summer shows the slower line a month earlier.
None of the three runs itself. The price, the preparation and the negotiation are each run by someone, and who runs them changes where a house lands in that line. We can’t promise you a number. We can tell you the plan is the part you get to choose, and so is the person who runs it. Choose that part well.
And below $600,000?
The wind is at your back, but it is a 2026 wind, not a 2022 one. Supply in those bands runs between two and a half and four months. The county is closing at about 98 percent of the final asking price, which means the asking price is a ceiling, and buyers decide whether to walk up to it. A house priced at this year’s number gets walked up to in about a month. Plan for sixty to ninety days from listing to closing anyway. Canton in July is the previous frame of the same film.
Elizabeth found her row. She is in the slower line, and now she knows it is a line, not a wall. She is spending October on the file, and on two repairs the last showings on her street mentioned. She will price in November against what her buyer is touring. The pad is still on the table. It just has a row circled now, and a plan beside it.
The market does not know your street, but it knows your row. What it has never known is your plan. That page is still blank, and it is yours.