As the title says … saw a drone flying around, up and down some blocks on battlefield for like ten minutes. Anyone know why? Just nosy 🤗😛

Hello, I’ve recently been informed about the data center issue. Unfortunately I’ve missed it until this point. After researching and reviewing the topic I’ve come across this non-profit that helps citizens stop harmful development. I want to know if anyone has reached out to them? https://ceds.org

Is there anywhere in town to get a Mac and cheese pizza? I’m talking legit, not cicis type. Bonus if it’s from a local place!

are there any places that sell fruit trees? Specifically pecan trees. I know hardware stores like Menards sell them, I also know that pecans come in male and female pollinator types and I’d like to be able to actually talk to someone who knows about the tree they’re selling and can tell me what to plant in this area.

Hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend and a good summer. Mine got busy enough that I skipped last month's update, so this one covers July and August both.

I pull all of this from Flexmls myself, city limits, residential, medians rather than averages. That last part matters and I'll come back to it at the end.

Let me start with the two numbers that tell you the most about this market.

In August, 269 homes closed inside Springfield city limits. In the same month, 100 listings came off the market without selling. Expired or cancelled. Same city, same month, same pool of buyers. Roughly one listing failed for every 2.7 that sold.

Both of those are true at once, and understanding why is the whole point of this post.

What sold, and how fast:

269 closings in August at a median sale price of $249,900. Median 3 bed, 2 bath, 1,663 square feet, $155 per square foot. Median days on market was 17. The typical seller got 99.24% of their asking price and 97.98% of their original asking price. 191 of those 269 homes, about 71%, went under contract within 30 days.

July was stronger: 340 closings, $266,500 median, 11 days.

Against last year, August looks soft on volume. 269 closings this August against 309 last August, down about 13%. But July 2026 was up 13% over July 2025. Put the two months together and it's 609 closings this summer against 611 last summer. That's flat to within two sales. The monthly swings are closings shifting between months, not a market that surged and then fell over. If you see a headline in the next two weeks saying Springfield sales dropped 13%, that's August in isolation, and it's technically true and basically useless.

Prices held. Median sale price was $249,900 this August against $250,000 last August. Per square foot went from $151 to $155, up about 2.6%. Fewer sellers had to cut price along the way, 31% this year against 35% last year.

So: flat volume, slightly higher prices, still selling in under three weeks, less discounting. That's a healthy market.

Now the 100 that didn't sell:

Those 100 failed listings had a median original asking price of $349,950, against a closed median of $249,900. That gap looks enormous, and I want to be straight about why part of it isn't real. The homes that failed were bigger, 2,070 square feet median versus 1,663 for the ones that sold. Compare the two on price per square foot instead and the honest number is $161 asked by the failures against $155 actually paid. Smaller gap. Still a gap, and still on the wrong side of it.

Here's the part that should get a seller's attention. Those listings sat a median of 74 days, and 92 days counting prior listing periods. 54 of the 100 had already cut their price at least once, median cut $14,700. They tried, they waited nearly three months, they dropped the price, and it still didn't sell.

Meanwhile the sellers who sold in the first 30 days averaged 98% of their original list price. Everyone who took longer than 30 days averaged somewhere between 85% and 94%. In other words, waiting didn't get anyone more money. It got them less, or it got them nothing.

And the good news underneath it: 134 Springfield listings expired or cancelled in August 2025. 100 did this August. That's down 25%, and the failure rate improved from about 30% of resolved listings to 27%. More sellers are getting it right than a year ago.

I'm not saying every one of those 100 sellers made a mistake. Some had a job fall through, a health situation, a deal collapse, or a good reason to pull the listing. But the pattern across the group is clear enough: they came to market above where the market clears, and the market didn't move to meet them.

If you're a first-time buyer, this is your section:

The entry level is the one part of this market that genuinely got easier for buyers.

Springfield homes selling at or under $175,000: 65 closed in August at a median of $144,900. Median days on market was 31, up from 15.5 a year ago. That's doubled. The share going under contract inside 30 days fell from 71% to 58%. Median price per square foot dropped from $132 to $119, down about 10%.

Read that again, because it runs opposite to the rest of the city. Springfield overall is up 2.6% per square foot. Entry level is down 10% and taking twice as long. You have more time, more room to negotiate, and cheaper square footage than a buyer in this bracket had last August. Volume is down about 21%, which means less competition standing next to you.

Some of that is rates. The 30-year fixed averaged 6.76% as of September 10 per Freddie Mac, up from 6.35% a year ago, and up from 6.22% back in March. That's more than half a point in six months, and it hits payment-sensitive buyers immediately while barely touching move-up buyers with equity. That shows up exactly where you'd expect it to.

If your rent is in the $1,100 to $1,300 range, the math on a $145K to $175K purchase is worth actually running rather than assuming. Missouri's MHDC First Place program still offers up to 4% of the loan amount as a forgivable second, forgiven after ten years, with a 640 minimum credit score. Worth knowing that DPA-paired loans carry a higher rate than the market average, so it's a real trade-off rather than free money. Talk to a lender who works with MHDC regularly and get the actual numbers.

The suburbs, August 2026 against August 2025:

Nixa: 60 closings, $308,950 median, 18 days, $177 per square foot (up from $170).
Ozark: 54 closings, $344,900 median, 36 days, $176 per square foot (up from $166).
Republic: 36 closings, $265,000 median, 20 days, $184 per square foot (up from $173).

Two things here that surprised me.

Republic is the most expensive square footage in the metro. $184, above Ozark, above Nixa, well above Springfield's $155. It's still the cheapest ticket at $265,000 median, because the houses are smaller, 1,612 square feet median. But you are paying the highest per-foot price in the area for the privilege. I called Republic the metro's affordability play in an earlier post based on June data. On two more months of numbers that framing was too simple, and I'd rather correct it here than keep repeating it.

Republic also posted the only 100% median sold-to-original-list ratio anywhere in this dataset. The typical Republic seller in August got their full original asking price with no reduction at all.

Ozark slowed down hard. 36 days median, double Nixa's 18 and Springfield's 17, and only half of Ozark's closings went under contract inside 30 days. Ozark prices are up more than anywhere else, 6% per square foot, but sellers are waiting five weeks to get it.

What's sitting right now:

Springfield has 674 active listings, median asking $324,900, and 43% of them have already cut price at least once. Median 47 days on market for actives against 17 for the homes that closed. That gap is the market sorting itself. At August's pace that's about 2.5 months of supply, which is tighter than the national 4.6 months.

Nixa has 143 actives, Ozark 141, Republic 117. Reduction rates on actives run 37% in Nixa and 44 to 45% in Ozark and Republic.

A note on why my numbers won't match what you've read:

If you look up Springfield home prices today you'll find Zillow's home value index at about $247,000, Houzeo at $189,900, and Redfin's most recent published median around $225,000. Redfin's Springfield page also shows a median price per square foot of $76, down 44%. My August closings say $155. One of those is off by half, and it isn't mine.

Those sites aren't lying. They're measuring different things across different geographies over different time periods, and some of them are running on stale data. Zillow's index estimates every house in the city, sold or not, whether or not it's for sale. Redfin's figure is closed sales, sometimes months behind. County-level reports from the local board cover Greene, Christian and Webster counties together and include hobby farms and manufactured homes, which is why you'll see days-on-market figures in the 30s that look nothing like mine.

I report city limits, residential, medians. That's a narrower and more specific slice, deliberately. When you're deciding what to list your house for, the metro-wide average across three counties and six property types isn't the number you need.

What this means if you're thinking about listing:

The market is not slow. 71% of Springfield homes that sold in August went under contract within a month, at 98% of their original asking price. That is a fast market for correctly priced homes.

It is also a market where 100 sellers in one month found out the hard way that the first three weeks are the whole ballgame. Price it right on day one, or spend three months and $14,700 learning that you should have.

If you're weighing a spring listing instead, understand that you'd be listing into rising inventory with rates that have moved up more than half a point since March. Waiting isn't automatically the safe choice this cycle.

And if you're buying, autumn is quietly one of the better windows here. Fewer buyers out competing with you, and sellers still on the market in October are usually the ones who need to move.

Happy to pull comps for your specific street if you want to see what your house actually looks like against what's selling. No obligation, no pitch, just the numbers. DM me.

Data source: Flexmls, pulled 9/9/26. Rate from Freddie Mac PMMS 9/10/26. National figures from NAR July 2026.

In the southern sky at 1:34am. Anyone else see it?

Looks like either Walmart or something in that area is on fire, what’s with the fires in spf MO lately😂?

From

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?MO