It’s May, so here’s the archive of April’s note. If you’re interested in getting this note directly to your inbox every month, please subscribe here. If you have any questions about the market or the note, please ask me! This note led to a loss of a few subscribers, and I suspect it’s because I state bluntly that this current war is bad. The loss of those subscribers is not much of a loss. I’m already working on April’s note. If you’re interested, please subscribe. If you have story ideas or questions, please let me know.

In a shift from previous monthly note archive posts, I’m shifting the order of posts a bit. Leading with the Charlottesville real estate market update. Have a question? Call or text – 434-242-7140

Issue #186

April 2026 Note from Jim —  “Home” matters more than ever. This month: Curiosity, the Charlottesville real estate market in the first quarter of 2026, AI and retention of expertise, you are not alone.

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The Scratch on the Ceiling

I was stretching one morning after a ride and I looked up and noticed the long scratch on the ceiling. Many years ago, our Christmas tree was too big, and the top of the tree left a little scar in our ceiling. I like that little scar; it reminds me of a time when we were all together. Now, with one nearing the end of college, and one out of the house with her own kids, it’s my wife and me. Which is amazing, and sometimes a bit sad. The scars bring happiness. 🙂

Value of Homes

The note below is from 2014. I am constantly reminded of how I still believe every word of it.

I’m sharing two thoughts from clients – one as a response to last month’s note and one from a just-bought-their-first-home client. Every home buying experience is a journey; some journeys are longer than others, some are terrifyingly short. This note is the type of reaffirmation that is needed from time to time. Buying a home can be a great (bad or good) financial investment, but above all, buying a home is an investment in one’s self and one’s family:

“Amidst the clutter of a fresh move, boxes strewn everywhere, disorganization, life going on, cakes to make…there is a peace in me, a calm, that cannot be shaken. This house became our home the moment we stepped inside. We willed it to happen. Owning a home has lifted a weight off of our shoulders that was ever present in our subconscious. The weight and worry of never knowing what your landlord is thinking, of ever being asked to leave a house that you have made into a home, being outbid on a rental, never being able to really make the house your own, paying someone else’s mortgage with nothing to show for it in the end, these are things I hope I never have to think about again.”

I am grateful for their giving me the opportunity to help. As I was telling my wife, that note makes what I do worthwhile.

And then there was this awesome response to part of April’s note in which I described the value of being appropriately emotionally detached from the transaction and how empathy is the “killer app” that was partially lost in the previous real estate market:

“Also, what you said about detachment…competence + empathy = disaster (I paraphrase) resonated with me. In my profession, you have to be competent…and you have to…or should…possess empathy…but you also have to know when to exercise the empathy…or you lose focus and your judgment becomes clouded. For example, in the middle of a resuscitation (i.e. when a person comes in without a pulse), you can’t break into tears…you have to be focused and be deliberate in your actions…or the patient suffers… I think the concept is the same in all…or at least many…professions.”

That is what my clients (should) expect from me. Every transaction has new things to learn; if I lose my head and share the fear and emotion that my clients are experiencing, I’m not doing what they’ve hired me to do: to be the competent, knowledgeable guide who will advise them appropriately. Again, I am thankful for her sharing that with me (and allowing me to share with you).

 

 

Curiosity matters/State of the Charlottesville Market

But … why?

Because if I’m not curious, I’m not thinking. If I’m not thinking, I’m likely regurgitating without thinking or processing.

AI has already allowed us to become cognitively sedentary, and that will only increase over time. But just as we must be responsible for our bodies in an era of office work, we must now keep our minds active. Writing is a gym for human thought we need now more than ever. – Jamil Zaki

I wrote a blog post last month, asking “Is it a Buyer’s or Seller’s Market in Charlottesville Right Now?” I used Claude for a bit more of the data pulling than I normally do, as I was looking more broadly, and was, frankly, a bit lazy. The following day, I was talking to a client about this topic and was frustrated to find that I couldn’t recall the data I had written. It’s a useful blog post, but the expertise in practice was lacking. Anyone can throw data in AI to get an answer; not everyone can interpret the data and advise appropriately.

When I related this story to clients who are both professors at UVA, they agreed wholeheartedly and shared their own examples. AI is great when it’s well used as a tool for learning and digesting, and not as a replacement.

This month, I’m curious, and I’m writing down my work in my paper notebook. With a pen. (And lots of scratch-throughs!)

What’s selling? What’s not? What are the median days on market?

The questions I’m really asking: How should my clients price their homes? What should my clients offer on that home? The answers are often found in the data, and the emotions.

 

The Analysis: Something Different This Month

I did my quarterly Reddit AMA a few days ago; this is part of that.

• Inventory is up a bit: We are on track for the highest number of resale listings since 2021. 678 new resale listings YTD across Albemarle and Charlottesville. That’s the highest YTD count since 2021 (745). For context: 2022 had 619, 2023 had 507, 2024 had 537, 2025 had 640. More sellers are testing the market.
• Why? Through my lens, the people who are buying and selling are the ones who need to move more than want to move. While we have more inventory, a lot of the good houses are going under contract fast, with multiple offers. (Still!)
• Median sold price tells a bifurcated story. The headline “median is flat” hides what’s really happening:
  • Albemarle detached resale: $649,500 — up 8% YoY
  • Charlottesville detached resale: $525,000 — down 2% YoY
  • Attached resale is softer in both — Albemarle $370K (?7.5%), Charlottesville $315K (?14%, small sample)
  • Albemarle new construction detached: $859K — down 7% from last year. Builders are adjusting. Resale sellers mostly aren’t.
• I’m working on a story about this new-ish aspect of our market: The paradox of choice makes the groundwork leading up to the buying decision even more important; the psychology of “how/where do I/we want to live” is critical.
• Of the homes that have gone under contract so far in 2026, 51% (of currently under contract listings) ratified within 7 days of listing. When a home sells, it often sells fast. When it doesn’t sell fast, it tends to sit. One of my colleagues called it one type of market; I call it bifurcated market.
• Above $1.5M, only 22% of listings have gone under contract at all, and of those 31% ratified in a week. The top of the market is slower and more selective; a fair number sell off-market. (The attacks on the MLS are a growing and important story.)
• Attached vs. detached: So far in 2026, 66% of new resale listings have been detached homes, with 23% being attached (townhomes/villas) and 11% condos.

For buyers and sellers: price matters. I have said and written this for decades, and every year I say it with more emphasis.

After two weekends, every interested buyer has either seen or discarded a house. Buyers know the market; they watch it all day every day. They know if a house is priced well, low, or high, almost immediately and intuitively.

To the Question about Velocity of the Market

165 have been listed this year that have sold. Median days on market for these is 4; likely meaning they came on the market on Thursday or Friday and went under contract Monday, so the effective days on market could be 0 or 1.

• The “Fast” Market (0-7 Days) – 73% (of the 165 that have actually closed). These homes are not just selling at list price; on average, they are selling for 100.8% of the asking price, indicating frequent bidding wars or over-asking offers.
• Homes that sold in 0-7 days maintained a 100.8% list to sales price ratio relative to their original price, and I’ve had buyers lose several bidding wars because they (rightfully) were not willing/able to go to the ultimate selling price.
• Homes that sat for 31+ days ultimately sold for only 95.2% of their original starting price.

My opinion is that pricing low is mostly fine; the market will correct that upward, rapidly.

Overprice and the seller gets punished by the market.

I Actually Do Care/Just Be Nice

I had a client last year reach out to me about possibly putting their home on the market. When I got to the house he asked me, “I know you, and I’m going trust you’re okay with this. My kid is trans.” I looked at him and said, “I don’t care. Are they nice?”

He laughed, and said they were nice.

I do care. Genuinely.

Even if we didn’t have fair housing laws, human decency should be the default.

Many years ago, I worked with a guy with a very limited budget. We looked for many months, couldn’t find anything, and he took a break. The next year he reached out. I vividly remember him across the table from me nervously asking if I was ok representing a same-sex couple.

I asked him one question: “Can you afford a house now?” He laughed and said yes. The only other thing I remember about that meeting — how I was still annoyed at the beautiful goal he’d scored on me a couple seasons prior when I was still playing soccer. Just lofted it over my head from 30 yards out. I’m still annoyed. But it was a beautiful goal.

Human kindness matters.

My younger one and I were texting about the state of the world.

She said —

But why choose to be selfish? I’m going to help other people so they will help save my family. Call it a village. We need other people.

I want to have a life and a stable one where when we go to war, the boys (her nephews) and the dog can stay with me. I don’t want them to live in a place of war. Besides, [our dog] doesn’t like the sounds of fireworks, much less war.

Being nice isn’t hard. It’s quite simple. We would all do well to be nice more often.

 

What I’m Reading

• Midnight train from Georgia: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle in the shutdown
• What is Zillow Preview?
• How Many Homes Sold in Charlottesville Last Year (an MLS Story)
• The Art of Being Nice: Why Collaboration Matters in Real Estate
• It will never stop raining. And the tool to find your best weather in Spain
• Build Your Digital Detective Kit – Verifying what you see online is now a basic survival skill; here’s how to do it.
• I think if we were forced to walk through places we comfortably drive through, we might be less likely to accept them in their current state. This is a great thread; I agree as I see our city and county differently and more intimately when I walk or ride places.
• Do Off-Market Listings Help or Hurt Home Sellers? Related blog post I just wrote – Teamwork to Search (the Internet) for Homes. I’m going to send the latter to all of my new buyer clients.
• Alula – “Clinicians and caregivers, writing what families actually need to hear.” — this is good stuff for those in the sandwich generation.
• “My 15 year old was doing her download of the day with me after school just now. She said that she was trying to start an English assignment and kept thinking of the quote by the Palestinian poet, Marwan Makhoul, “In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political, I must listen to the birds, and in order to hear the birds, the warplanes must be silent.”I had never heard it before. She knew it by heart.” — via Threads 

What I’m Listening to

• Is the Labor Market About to Tip Us Into Recession?
• Think Again by Adam Grant — from my local library via the Libby app.
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates — also from the library via Libby.

Next month: Paradox of choice and closing the chapter. And more. I have so many stories yet to write.

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