July Home Sales in Rutherford County: The Market Got Smaller, Not Weaker
July home sales in Rutherford County came in at 447 closings, down only 2 percent from last July. Pending contracts fell 14 percent to 372, and that is the number most people noticed. What almost nobody mentioned is that new listings fell further, dropping 20 percent to 677. The Turner Victory Team measures the share of new listings that found a buyer at 54.9 percent this July against 51.0 percent last July.
Fewer homes came on the market, and a higher percentage of them sold. July home sales in Rutherford County did not slow because buyers disappeared. The pool of homes for sale got smaller.
July home sales in Rutherford County produced one headline number that got repeated everywhere: pending contracts were down 14 percent from last July. That number is real. It is also incomplete, and reading it alone leads to the wrong conclusion about what is actually happening in the Murfreesboro market.
Every week the Turner Victory Team tracks July home sales in Rutherford County and the full weekly market through live Realtracs MLS data and our Tru Insights™ platform. This report covers the July monthly recap plus the week ending August 15, 2026, and serves Murfreesboro, Smyrna, La Vergne, Rockvale, Christiana, Eagleville, and Lascassas. For the full charts, visit the Rutherford County market update page or the interactive market charts.
What July Home Sales in Rutherford County Actually Showed
Here is the full month against the same month last year, straight from the Realtracs monthly report for single family residential in Rutherford County.
| Metric | July 2025 | July 2026 | Year Over Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| New listings | 845 | 677 | Down 20% |
| New under contract | 431 | 372 | Down 14% |
| Closings | 456 | 447 | Down 2% |
| Active inventory, average | 1,295 | 1,338 | Up 3% |
| Days from list to contract | 43 | 50 | Up 16% |
| Days from contract to closed | 43 | 41 | Down 6% |
| Days from list to closed | 90 | 88 | Down 2% |
| Months of supply | 3.35 | 3.64 | Up 9% |
Three of those rows moved down and one of them moved down hard. New listings fell by 168 homes. That is the largest single change in the table, and it is the one that explains most of the others. Our earlier report on new listings down in Murfreesboro real estate covered the start of this pattern. July is where it accelerated.
Why July Home Sales in Rutherford County Broke the Normal Pattern
In most years, more homes come on the market in July than in June. That is simply how the calendar works here. In 2025, new listings went from 799 in June up to 845 in July, a gain of about 6 percent.
This year it went backwards. June 2026 brought 828 new listings. July brought 677. That is a drop of roughly 18 percent from one month to the next, at the exact point on the calendar where the count normally rises. Rutherford County sellers made a collective decision in July, and July home sales in Rutherford County reflect that decision more than they reflect anything buyers did.
The Ratio That Reframes July Home Sales in Rutherford County
If buyers had genuinely pulled back, contracts would have fallen faster than listings did. That is not what happened. Listings fell 20 percent and contracts fell 14 percent, which means a larger share of the homes that came on the market actually found a buyer.
The Turner Victory Team measures that share by dividing new contracts by new listings in the same month:
Two consecutive months converted a higher share of new listings into contracts than the same month a year earlier. One month could be noise. Two months in a row, moving the same direction, is worth paying attention to. That is the single most useful thing July home sales in Rutherford County tell a seller right now.
The Wait for the First Offer Got Longer
One row in the July table deserves its own look. Days from list to contract went from 43 last July to 50 this July, an increase of 16 percent. Over the same period, days from contract to closing actually shortened, from 43 down to 41. Start to finish, the total barely moved, from 90 days down to 88.
Read that as a seller and the message is specific. Nothing about getting to the closing table got harder. Getting the first offer took about a week longer. That is a pricing and first impression conversation, not a lending conversation. Our post on the best time to sell in Murfreesboro covers how the listing month shapes that same outcome. These three averages come from different pools of homes, so they should not be added together.
Why the Offer Took Longer: Showings Per Listing
Turner Victory Team showing data explains the extra week cleanly. Average showings per active listing peaked near 2.4 per week in mid April. On a 30 day rolling average, that figure is now sitting below one showing per listing per week, the lowest reading of 2026.
If your home is on the market in Rutherford County right now, roughly one showing per week is the county average. More than that and you are ahead of pace. Fewer and something about price or presentation is working against you. Our guide on how many showings to expect when selling in Murfreesboro puts that number in context by price range.
Fewer buyers are walking through each home than at any point this year. At the same time, a higher share of listings are converting to contracts. Less traffic, but better traffic.
Rutherford County This Week: August 15, 2026
The first two weeks of August are pointing back the other way from July. Pending contracts came in at 120 this week against a four week average of 95. That is the second time in four weeks the count has landed meaningfully above the recent average. Months of supply has now declined three weeks in a row, from 3.66 to 3.54 to 3.41.
The Turner Victory Team Market Health Score™ for Rutherford County sits at 43, which reads as a balanced market with a slight lean toward buyers. County wide list to sale ratio is 98.9 percent, so correctly priced homes are still closing very near asking. The 30 year fixed rate is 6.67 percent and has held in a narrow band for about three weeks. New construction accounts for 34.4 percent of active listings, 44.6 percent of the homes that came on this week, and 25 percent of the homes that went under contract.
July Home Sales in Rutherford County by Price Range
The county average never tells the whole story. Here is where the market stood by price bracket for the week ending August 15, 2026.
| Price Range | Active Listings | Months of Supply | List to Sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $300K | 130 | 2.54 | 98.2% |
| $300K-$399K | 339 | 2.23 | 99.2% |
| $400K-$499K | 438 | 3.47 | 99.0% |
| $500K-$599K | 329 | 4.68 | 99.1% |
| $600K-$699K | 153 | 4.66 | 99.3% |
| $700K-$799K | 78 | 4.68 | 98.4% |
| $800K-$999K | 67 | 3.87 | 98.5% |
| $1M-$1.5M | 54 | 6.75 | 97.1% |
| $1.5M+ | 37 | 7.16 | 96.8% |
The tightest part of the county is still under $400,000, where months of supply sits at 2.23 and 2.54. The most room for buyers is above $1 million, where supply runs 6.75 and 7.16 months and list to sale ratios drop below 98 percent. Our report on months of supply in Rutherford County explains how to read those bands.
On pricing, the July median sale price came in at $450,000 against $475,875 last July. That gap is worth naming honestly. July 2025 ran unusually high, and June 2026 landed at the same $450,000 as July did. The average list price of active homes actually rose about 1 percent year over year. This is a difference in which homes closed, not evidence that values fell across the county.
What July Home Sales in Rutherford County Mean for You
If You Are Selling
Your competition is thinner than it was a year ago, since 168 fewer homes came on the market in July. But you get fewer swings at it. Under one showing per week means your first impression has to land the first time. County wide list to sale is 98.9 percent, so priced right still gets paid. See how the Turner Victory Team approaches pricing.
If You Are Buying
You have less company in the showing lineup than at any point in 2026. Under $400,000 is still the tightest part of the county, so be ready and move decisively there. Above $1 million you have real negotiating room and time to compare. See how the Turner Victory Team guides buyers with live data.
Rutherford County has closed 3,364 homes so far in 2026 against 5,351 for all of last year. Barring a major change in rates or the broader economy, the Turner Victory Team still expects the county to finish ahead of last year’s total. Whether you are buying, selling, or relocating to Middle Tennessee, the smartest step is to see where your specific price range stands before you list or make an offer. Our report on the odds of selling your home in Murfreesboro is a good next read.
Market Analysis by John Turner, Creator of Tru Insights.
What is going on with the Rutherford County real estate market right now? That is what a lot of people are asking, because pending home sales have dropped. Does this mean the market is getting ready to slow down? We are going to dig into that and a few other things here on the Murfreesboro Real Estate Report. I am John Turner, team leader of the Turner Victory Team at Onward Real Estate, and we bring you the Murfreesboro Real Estate Report each and every week.
Let us start with our July recap, because this is the number that has everybody talking. Pending home sales are down 14 percent from July of last year. New listings hitting the market were down 20 percent this July versus last July. Closings were down 2 percent, so just a slight downward turn there. List to contract, the time it took from going on the market to going under contract, was up 16 percent. So it took longer to go under contract. And our months of supply is up as well, up 9 percent.
Let us talk more about the pending home sales, because that seems to be what caught a lot of people’s eyes. In July 2025 we had 845 homes come on the market. In July of 2026, 677. So we were down 20 percent year over year. Looking at what went pending over that same stretch, we were down 14 percent. Closings were down 2 percent.
Generally speaking, the way it normally works is that we see more listings come on the market in July than we see in June. That is evident right here. 2026 broke that trend. The interesting thing is when we compare the number of homes that came on the market to the number that went under contract, that ratio is 57 and a half percent for June, which is better than June of 2025. But it is the July number everyone was worried about. Using that same ratio, almost 55 percent versus 51 percent for last year.
So what that tells me is yes, I know pending home sales were down 14 percent, but there were not as many homes to choose from. We still have a lot of homes on the market and there are all sorts of reasons why some of those are sitting. But when I am analyzing this, instead of trying to pull one number out, I am trying to look at the market as a whole. I do know we have a little bit of a demand problem, just because mortgage rates are up, the time of year, a lot of different things. But I think this might have been as much a supply problem as a demand problem.
Now with that said, our demand has been dropping off, and that is normally the way it works. We peaked at about 2.4 showings per listing. We are down this week to below one showing per listing. So if you are on the market in Rutherford County right now, you can expect about one showing on your house every week. Anything more than that and you are beating the odds. Anything less and you are a little bit behind.
The Turner Victory Team Market Health Score this week is a 43. It is a balanced market but it is leaning toward buyers. We have 1,639 homes on the market right now with a 3.41 months supply, and the 30 year mortgage rate at 6.67 percent. It has been hanging out there for the past two or three weeks. I thought last week we were going to get a little relief and maybe we did get a slight bit, but it is not moving as much as most of us would hope for.
Almost 35 percent of the homes on the market are new construction. Of the 130 listings that came on the market this week, 45 percent were new construction. 120 homes went under contract and only 25 percent of those were new construction. So you can see the builders are leading the way on the amount of inventory we have on the market, but the number of homes that go under contract runs about 25 percent week in and week out.
Our inventory has climbed all year, which traditionally it does. But right now we have kind of leveled out, the same pattern we found last year. I would expect us to continue to drop a little, and then as we get to the fall we will see more of a drop off. Months of supply is pretty much mimicking where we were last year, about a tenth to two tenths higher, but pretty close once we made it past the spring.
New listings we have talked about quite a bit. You can see the gap by looking at the chart. We have normalized a little the past couple of weeks. We are still down, but not down as much as we were. All year we have been down on our new listings.
The big question, because July pendings were down, is what is going to happen moving forward. Is this a trend? Is the market cooling? Do we have a crash coming? All these things go through your mind, especially if you lived through 2007 and 2008. We cannot take one stat or a couple of weeks and really lean on it. I am glad we did not do that for July, because if you remember, last week we talked about pending home sales bouncing back to exactly the same amount we had this time last year. This week we saw another increase. It did not keep up with the 2025 number, but it certainly came out a lot better than what we saw in July.
So there is nothing I am overly concerned with right now about the market slowing, except for seasonal factors. Even mortgage rates. We looked at this a lot last week, but the rates themselves did not impact sales as much as I would have thought. I would have thought we were in more of a mortgage rate driven market than a seasonal market, but we still have a lot of seasonality here.
I want to talk about yearly closings, just because of the time of year. Last year we had 5,351 homes close all year. We have been tracking ahead of that and I still think we will finish ahead. We are at 3,364 right now, so we are about 2,000 away. Unless something major happens with mortgage rates or the economy, I would expect another 2,000 to 2,200 homes sold in Rutherford County for the remainder of the year.
So when we talk about pending home sales slowing or inventory being down, all those things that sometimes sound like a negative, we are still in a healthy market that is producing sales and people are moving. It is not working for everybody, and we go back to pricing and presentation and positioning. But we are in a healthy market. It is just not the velocity some of us would want.
On showings per listing, unless you are below $400,000 you are not really getting more than one showing per week. It is interesting, we did see a little bump in the $600,000s, so if you are there, there was a little bit of life. But if you look at the overall trend, we peaked at 2.38. Last week we had a slight bump and we asked whether that would continue. Obviously it did not. This is a 30 day rolling average, so it is a little harder to gauge than actual weekly numbers, but it certainly helps us see the trend.
So to recap. Point number one, sellers stepped back in July and new listings were down. Point number two, the market did not necessarily get weaker, which is what we were concerned about. The market got smaller. There were fewer new listings coming on, so there was less for buyers to choose from. The good thing, if you are a seller who has been on the market a while, is that means less competition coming in. Well over 30 percent of the homes that sell go under contract in the first week, so without those coming on, it hopefully makes the homes that are sitting a little more attractive.
If you are a buyer, there are continued opportunities out there. I would imagine there are more sellers getting a little more motivated as we get to this part of the year. I think sellers see the writing on the wall that they missed the spring and summer market, and maybe they need to be a little more aggressive if they are going to get their home sold. Point number three, there is less traffic, and that is more seasonal than anything, though I do think mortgage rates are affecting it some as well.
That is what we have for your Murfreesboro Real Estate Report this week. I hope you are getting some good information out of it. Please comment below if you have specific questions, or email me directly at john@turnervictory.com. We are more than happy to look at whatever data points you would like and come back with that information. I appreciate you tuning in. Until next week, we hope you make it a great week.
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