Jacksonville Housing Market Update: August 2026

July's update said the leverage in Northeast Florida lived above $500,000 and in new construction. August moved it. Pull the closed sales and the live inventory for Duval, St. Johns, Clay and Nassau through the end of August and the picture is a market that has stopped falling in price, stopped rising in inventory, and quietly flipped which price band is tight. The headlines still say "Florida is crashing." The four-county numbers say normalization is finishing its work, and the deals are now in a different place than they were sixty days ago.

Here is what August's data says, county by county, and what to do about it.

What the August numbers say

Start with price, because it is the number that did the least. Jacksonville's 12-month median sale price is $310,000, down 2.1% from a year ago; Duval County as a whole is $313,990 (−2.4%). Move south and the median doubles: St. Johns County closed at $500,000 (−1.5%), Clay County at $336,485 (−1.7%), and Nassau County was the one county in the metro with a positive year — $453,170, up 1.0%. Every one of those is a rounding error on a home price, not a correction. Two years of flat is what a soft landing looks like from inside it.

The story in August was inventory, and it was the opposite of the story in spring. Duval County's active listings peaked at 4,135 on August 15 and have drifted down since — 4,098 at month end, 4,067 by mid-September. St. Johns has fallen from 2,002 in early July to 1,919; Nassau from 607 to 567. Only Clay kept climbing, from 1,133 to a late-August peak of 1,182. The inventory rebuild that gave buyers their leverage has plateaued. Supply sits at 3.7 months in Duval, 3.1 in St. Johns, 3.6 in Clay and 4.5 in Nassau — balanced everywhere, leaning to sellers in St. Johns.

Homes are taking 44 days to go under contract in Jacksonville, 52 in St. Johns, 46 in Clay and 55 in Nassau, and they are closing at 95.6% to 96.4% of list across the four counties. That last number is the one sellers should tape to the fridge: the market is not paying asking, and it is not paying 90% either. It is paying about four cents under, reliably, to sellers who priced within reach of it.

Cash is still a quarter of the market. 25% of 2025 closings in Jacksonville were cash (26% in St. Augustine), which is why a 6.76% mortgage rate has not produced the collapse the national writers keep predicting: a quarter of the buyers do not have a rate.

Where the leverage moved

This is the part that changed since July, and it changed by price band. In Duval County, homes under $300,000 carry 3.7 months of supply and take 49 days to sell; $300,000 to $500,000 carries 3.1 months at 40 days. Above that the market tightens instead of loosening: $500,000 to $750,000 is at 2.2 months and 38 days, and $750,000-plus is at 2.6 months. The move-up bands that were the buyer's playground in spring have been picked over. The best selection in Duval today is at the entry level, where 1,153 homes under $300,000 are competing for buyers who are the most rate-sensitive people in the market.

St. Johns tells the same story with bigger numbers: 2.7 months of supply between $500,000 and $750,000, 2.9 months from $300,000 to $500,000, and the widest choice — 3.4 months — under $300,000, which in St. Johns mostly means condos and townhomes in the World Golf Village and St. Augustine corridors. Nassau is the exception in the metro: 5.0 months of supply above $750,000 and 3.9 months in the $500,000s, with days on market stretching past 70 in the mid bands. If you want negotiating room on a bigger home in Northeast Florida in September, Nassau County and Fernandina Beach are where it lives.

New construction is the other lever, and it is a larger share of the market than most buyers realize: 21% of what is listed in Jacksonville is new, and in St. Johns, Clay and Nassau it is 32% to 33%. One in three homes for sale in the growth counties has a builder on the other side of the table, and builders are still defending volume with rate buydowns and closing credits. That sets the clearing price for every resale within a few miles of a model home, exactly as it did in July.

Why the "Florida is crashing" story still doesn't fit Jacksonville

Florida's distress is a condo-and-insurance story concentrated in South and Southwest Florida, and August did nothing to change that. Northeast Florida single-family is a different market: flat prices, balanced supply, a quarter of buyers paying cash, and in-migration that cooled from its 2022 pace but never turned negative. Ponte Vedra Beach closed the year at a median of $854,500, up 2.0%, on 3.7 months of supply. That is not what a crash looks like at the top of the market.

The national backdrop is the same regime it has been for two years. The 30-year fixed is 6.76% as of this report, and a rate in the mid-sixes is the environment, not a waiting room. Buyers who transacted in August did it by negotiating price and stacking seller- or builder-paid buydowns, not by timing the Fed. That will still be true in October.

What to do if you're buying or selling in Northeast Florida

If you're buying: the leverage moved, so move with it. In Duval and St. Johns the negotiable inventory is now under $500,000, not above it; above $500,000, expect competition and price to the comps. For a bigger home with room to negotiate, look at Nassau County, where supply above $750,000 is the loosest in the metro. Get every builder's incentive in writing and compare the effective monthly payment, not the sticker rate.

If you're selling: the market is paying about 96% of a realistic list price in 40 to 55 days. That is the deal on the table, and it is a good one by the standards of any year before 2020. If you are above $500,000 in Duval or St. Johns you have the tightest supply in the metro behind you — price to it, do not overreach past it. If you are in a new-construction corridor, know the builder's current incentive before you set a number, because that incentive is your competition's price.

August's Northeast Florida market rewards buyers who read the price bands and sellers who read the sale-to-list ratio. You can track every community's numbers on our live Jacksonville market page, the Duval, St. Johns, Clay and Nassau county pages, and the ZIP rankings.

Sources: realMLS closed sales and live inventory through August 31, 2026, compiled by Momentum Research (12-month medians; months of supply = active listings ÷ monthly closed sales); Freddie Mac PMMS via FRED for the 30-year fixed. Figures are deemed reliable but not guaranteed.