2026-09-30 · 7 min read · South Coast and Cape Cod
South Coast and Cape Cod Market Report: August 2026
The state number is not your town's number
Massachusetts recorded a median single-family sale price of $695,000 in August 2026. Across the ten towns I work in, the same month produced medians running from $502,000 in Wareham to $1,425,000 in Mashpee.
Not one of my towns landed on the state figure, and most were nowhere near it. I am Susan Gorden Ryan, I sell homes across the South Coast and Cape Cod, and the statewide median is the number I get asked about most and use least. It describes Massachusetts honestly enough. It describes Mattapoisett not at all.
Town figures come first below, because those are the ones that touch what you own.
What each of my ten towns did in August
The table below covers closed single-family sales, published monthly by the Massachusetts Association of REALTORS. Every town name links to that town's own one-page report, so anything here can be checked against the source rather than taken on my word.
| Town | Homes sold | Median sale price | Change on a year earlier | Homes for sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mattapoisett | 8 | $880,000 | +15.8% | 36 |
| Marion | 1 | $1,250,000Too few sales to read as a trend | +37.9% | 28 |
| Rochester | 5 | $850,000Too few sales to read as a trend | +35.7% | 11 |
| Fairhaven | 14 | $570,800 | +15.3% | 20 |
| Wareham | 22 | $502,000 | -6.2% | 45 |
| Bourne | 23 | $790,000 | +8.7% | 43 |
| Sandwich | 25 | $728,000 | +15.0% | 60 |
| Falmouth | 30 | $1,137,500 | +2.9% | 106 |
| Mashpee | 15 | $1,425,000 | +77.5% | 51 |
| Barnstable | 31 | $799,000 | +7.5% | 118 |
Nine of the ten towns show a median above where they sat a year earlier. Wareham alone came down, by 6.2 percent.
Where a small town's number stops meaning anything
Marion recorded one single-family sale in August. Its median therefore reads $1,250,000, which tells you the price of one house and nothing whatsoever about the Marion market.
MAR prints the warning itself at the foot of every report: activity for one month can sometimes look extreme due to small sample size. Rochester sold five homes and shows a 35.7 percent rise. Mashpee sold fifteen and shows 77.5 percent, which reflects a change in which homes sold rather than a change in what homes are worth.
In a town the size of Marion or Rochester, one month is an anecdote and twelve months is a market. Whenever I price a home in one of these towns I pull the full year and the specific street, because the monthly headline swings too hard to lean on. Anyone quoting a one-month small-town percentage at you as a trend has either not checked the sample size or would rather you did not.
Inventory fell here far harder than it fell statewide
Statewide the number of homes for sale barely moved, 8,130 against 8,221 a year earlier, a fall of 1.1 percent. My ten towns did something quite different.
Eight of the ten carry less inventory than last August, several of them dramatically so. Rochester is down 42.1 percent, Mashpee 36.3 percent, Wareham 35.7 percent, Fairhaven 35.5 percent. Only Marion and Sandwich have more homes on the market than they did a year ago.
Sellers can read that as fewer competing homes locally than the statewide picture implies. Buyers should read it as the reason a well-presented house in Fairhaven or Wareham still draws a crowd while the national coverage talks about a cooling market. Both things are true at once, in different places, which is the whole argument for looking at your town instead of the country.
What the state as a whole did
The statewide picture matters as background, and as the thing your out-of-state relatives will quote at you over dinner.
| Measure | August 2026 | A year earlier | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median sale price | $695,000 | $680,000 | +2.2% |
| Closed sales | 4,052 | 4,059 | -0.2% |
| New listings | 4,535 | 3,871 | +17.2% |
| Homes for sale | 8,130 | 8,221 | -1.1% |
| Months of supply | 2.4 | 2.4 | -3.0% |
| Days on market before an accepted offer | 37 | 34 | +8.8% |
| Percent of original asking price received | 99.5% | 99.3% | +0.2% |
The figure that moved most is new listings, up 17.2 percent on last August. More sellers came to market across Massachusetts, yet standing inventory still finished the month lower than a year ago, which means the homes coming on are selling. Statewide, sellers took 99.5% of their original asking price.
Condominiums ran differently again: a median of $565,000, up +3.7% on the year, with sales down 6.1% even as new listings rose.
What I would do with this if I were thinking about selling
Use the table above to sanity-check what you have been told, then stop there. A town median covers every house that sold in town, from the cottage off the main road to the place on the water, and yours is one specific house on one specific street.
The useful next step is a number for your address with the reasoning attached, so you can push back on it. That is what I do before anyone lists anything, and plenty of those conversations end with me saying this is not your year. My fuller approach is on the page about downsizing and selling the big house, and each town has its own page, starting with Mattapoisett and Falmouth.
When you want the current figures for your own street rather than your town, get in touch with me and I will pull them.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page comes from the Massachusetts Association of REALTORS monthly market reports for August 2026, published free and publicly at marealtor.com. The town tables are here for single-family homes and here for condominiums, covering every municipality in the state.
All data from the Berkshire County Multiple Listing Service, Cape Cod & Islands Association of REALTORS®, Inc. and MLS Property Information Network, Inc. Provided by the Massachusetts Association of REALTORS®.
Two cautions travel with the data and I repeat them rather than bury them. Median sales price does not account for seller concessions. Activity for one month can sometimes look extreme due to small sample size. Figures also get revised after publication, so this page reflects August 2026 as MAR reported it on September 9, 2026. I refresh this report every month.