Four in Ten Boise Home Listings Have Taken a Price Cut

Of the roughly 5,200 homes listed for sale in Boise, about 39% have had their asking price lowered at least once since they went on the market. The figure comes from Parcl Labs, a real estate analytics firm, and was reported this week by the Idaho Business Review. The same data puts the average Boise listing at about $270 per square foot.

The story is framed around prices falling, and a quick read of the headline could leave you thinking Boise homes are suddenly 39% cheaper. Look at the bottom of the list and the real meaning comes through. Rochester, New York has the smallest share of listings with a price cut in the country, at 17.8%. Atlantic City, New Jersey is next at 18.9%, and in Lincoln, Nebraska, reductions touch 22% of listings. Those are shares of listings, and so is Boise's 39%. Nothing in the number tells you whether a typical cut was a few thousand dollars or a big chunk of the asking price.

That distinction matters, because a share-of-listings number is a measure of how often sellers guessed high. It says a lot about pricing behavior and very little about what your house is worth.

Here is where Boise lands. Nationwide, about 42% of active listings have taken a cut, across 1.57 million homes on the market as of early September. The steepest shares are in the West and the Sun Belt. Colorado Springs leads at 56.3%, followed by Austin at 54.1%, San Antonio at 53.4%, and Denver at 53.1%. At the state level, Oregon (49.7%) and Colorado (49.6%) top the list. Boise sits below the national figure and well behind the western cities it usually gets compared to.

I lived in Austin before moving to Boise, so seeing it near the top of that list caught my eye. Both cities had the same kind of run, with people arriving faster than homes could be built and sellers getting used to multiple offers. Austin is further along in cooling off, at least by this measure.

I got my first real estate license in Alabama in 1984 and later built homes, and the pattern in a softening market has always looked about the same to me. A seller sets a price based on what the neighbor got a year or two ago. The listing sits. The price comes down. The reduction is the market's reply to that first number, and in a cooler market the reply comes more often.

For someone thinking about selling in the Treasure Valley this fall, the useful takeaway is that four in ten sellers here have already been through that cycle. Getting the first price close is worth more than it was when everything moved in a weekend.

For buyers, a listing history that shows a reduction tells you the seller has already adjusted once and is paying attention. With this many homes in that position, there is more room to have a real conversation about price than there was a few years ago.

None of this adds up to a crash, and none of it says Boise values dropped by a third. It says the local market has shifted from one where sellers set the terms to one where the first asking price gets tested.

When you drive past a yard sign with a "price improved" rider on it, keep in mind that roughly four in ten Boise listings are wearing one. I'll be watching to see whether that share climbs into winter or settles back down.