I’ll admit something right up front: I use AI.

Sometimes it does something that genuinely makes me wonder how we ever worked without it. Other times I spend 20 minutes trying to get it to make one simple change to an image of my backyard redesign, and I wonder if throwing my laptop out the window would be easier.

But there’s one area where AI is getting really interesting for homeowners: figuring out what a home could become.

A new 2026 Houzz study found that 22% of homeowners doing renovations are already using AI as part of the process. Among those homeowners, 64% are using it to gather renovation and design ideas, 58% are using it to visualize concepts, and half are comparing layouts, products and finishes.

That’s not some future prediction. People are already doing it.

And I think it could have some interesting implications for real estate.

The Ugly Kitchen Problem

Anyone who has looked at homes with me knows I say some version of this all the time:

“Don’t let the paint color scare you.”

Or the cabinets.

Or the flooring.

Or the light fixtures somebody installed in 1997 and apparently loved enough to leave there for the next 29 years.

The problem is that not everyone can mentally renovate a house while standing in it.

I can walk into a dated kitchen and picture different cabinets, counters, flooring and lighting. A contractor or designer can usually do the same thing. But for plenty of buyers, what they see is what they see.

And sometimes they walk away from an otherwise great house because of it.

AI visualization tools are starting to change that.

Take a picture of a dated living room and you can experiment with different flooring, paint colors, furniture, lighting and styles almost instantly. You can do the same thing with a kitchen, bathroom or even the exterior of a house.

It doesn’t mean the AI version can necessarily be built exactly as shown.

But suddenly that ugly kitchen isn’t just an ugly kitchen.

You can actually see the possibilities.

That Could Matter Even More in Our Current Market

Around South Snohomish County and North King County, buyers frequently have to make tradeoffs.

Maybe the house in Lynnwood has the location and yard you want, but the kitchen needs work.

Maybe the Shoreline house has a great floor plan but an interior that hasn’t been updated in 25 years.

Maybe the Bothell home checks nearly every box, except somebody made some very questionable design decisions along the way.

Historically, homes like these have required buyers to have some imagination.

Now technology can provide some of that imagination for them.

And in a market where a beautifully updated home may command a significant premium over the dated house down the street, being able to look past cosmetics can potentially create an opportunity.

Sellers Can Use This Too

There’s another side to this.

One of the most common conversations I have with sellers is about what they should do to their home before putting it on the market.

Paint this?

Replace that flooring?

Update the kitchen?

Change the light fixtures?

Leave everything alone?

AI can be incredibly useful for exploring those possibilities before spending any money.

Want to see what your kitchen might look like with white cabinets instead of cherry?

Easy.

Wondering whether a warmer wall color would work better with your floors?

You can see it.

Thinking about changing the exterior color?

You can experiment with ten versions before buying a gallon of paint.

That part is fantastic.

But this is also where I think people need to be careful.

AI Can Show You What’s Possible. It Can’t Always Tell You What Makes Financial Sense.

This may be the most important distinction.

An AI tool can create a gorgeous rendering of your remodeled $70,000 kitchen.

That doesn’t mean you should spend $70,000 remodeling your kitchen before selling your house.

Those are two completely different questions.

What makes sense depends on the home, the neighborhood, the price point, the competition and what buyers in that particular market are actually responding to.

Sometimes new flooring and paint make a huge difference.

Sometimes changing a few fixtures is enough.

Sometimes a larger renovation makes sense.

And sometimes my advice is going to be: don’t touch it.

That’s where technology still needs human judgment.

Interestingly, the Houzz study seems to show homeowners understand that distinction.

Even with AI becoming more common, 80% of renovating homeowners still hire a professional. AI use also drops significantly once homeowners move beyond brainstorming and visualization into things like budgeting, timelines, permitting and contracts.

In other words, people are using AI to help answer:

“What could we do?”

They’re still turning to people with experience to help answer:

“What should we do?”

I Think That’s Where This Is Going

I don’t think AI is replacing contractors, designers, architects or real estate brokers.

I think it’s becoming another tool.

And for homeowners, it may be a really useful one.

It can help someone visualize a renovation before committing to it. It can help a buyer see beyond an outdated interior. It can help a seller experiment with improvements before spending money. And it can make conversations with contractors, designers and real estate professionals much more productive because everyone can actually see what is being discussed.

The technology will get better. Quickly.

But whether you’re renovating a home, preparing one for sale or considering buying a house that needs some work, I’d still separate two questions:

What could this house become?

And does it make financial sense to do it?

AI is getting remarkably good at helping with the first one.

For the second one, there’s still a lot to be said for knowing the local real estate market.

The final full week of August brought a noticeable shift in the market, with fewer new listings and price reductions, while buyer activity actually picked up.

From August 24th through August 30th:

New Listings: 174 ↓ from 196
Pending Sales: 190 ↑ from 180
Sold Homes: 125 ↓ from 128
Price Reductions: 192 ↓ from 231

Trend Overview

New inventory continued to slow as we approached the end of summer, with 174 new listings compared with 196 the previous week. That’s a drop of roughly 11% in just one week.

But buyers didn’t follow sellers to the sidelines.

Pending sales increased from 180 to 190, meaning more homes went under contract this week despite fewer new listings hitting the market.

Closed sales remained remarkably steady at 125 compared with 128 last week, while price reductions dropped more noticeably from 231 to 192.

Put it all together and we’re seeing a market that is slowing seasonally on the listing side, but still showing plenty of activity from buyers.

Buyers Are Still Buying

The most interesting relationship this week may be between new and pending listings.

We had 174 new listings come onto the market while 190 homes went pending.

Those aren’t directly interchangeable numbers since the pending homes could have been listed days, weeks or even months ago. But they do give us a useful snapshot of what’s happening with available inventory.

Buyers are still absorbing homes even as fewer sellers are bringing new options to market.

That’s worth watching as we move into September.

Fewer Price Reductions, But Pricing Still Matters

Price reductions dropped from 231 last week to 192 this week, a fairly significant decline.

That’s encouraging for sellers, but 192 reductions against 174 new listings still tells us something important about today’s market: buyers remain extremely sensitive to price.

Homes that are positioned correctly are selling. Homes that aren’t are often sitting until the seller makes an adjustment.

This continues to be a market where the initial pricing strategy matters.

What This Means for Buyers

Buyers still have leverage in parts of this market, particularly when looking at homes that have accumulated market time or already reduced their price.

But the increase to 190 pending sales is a good reminder that you’re not shopping in a market without competition.

The best homes, especially those that are well prepared and correctly priced, can still move quickly.

With new listings beginning to slow, buyers shouldn’t automatically assume that waiting until fall will produce substantially more choices.

What This Means for Sellers

For sellers, fewer new listings means less fresh competition.

At the same time, the increase in pending sales tells us buyers are still out there and willing to act when the right home hits the market.

The caution remains pricing.

Even with fewer new listings, nearly 200 sellers reduced their asking price this week. Starting too high can cost valuable early market exposure and ultimately leave a seller chasing buyers instead of attracting them.

Looking Ahead to Labor Day

Now we head into Labor Day weekend, and that’s where things could get interesting.

Holiday weekends typically disrupt the normal flow of new listings and buyer activity, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see next week’s new listing numbers come in even lower.

The more important number may be pending sales.

If buyers continue putting homes under contract while new inventory slows further, we could enter September with a tighter selection of available homes than buyers might expect.

I’ll be watching that one closely next week.

If you saw the latest housing headlines this week, one number probably jumped out at you:

Seattle home prices are down about 2% from a year ago.

According to the latest S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the Seattle area posted a 1.95% year-over-year decline in June. In fact, Seattle had the weakest annual performance of the 20 major metropolitan areas tracked by the index.

So… is the Seattle housing market finally falling?

Yes. Sort of.

And that’s exactly why this particular statistic deserves a little more explanation.

First, This Isn’t the Median Sales Price

When I first saw the 2% number, this was my immediate question.

Was this based on median home prices?

Because if it were, there would be a pretty big caveat.

Median sales prices can move simply because the mix of homes being sold changes. If fewer $1.5 million and $2 million homes sell this year and more $600,000 and $700,000 homes sell, the median price can fall even if the actual value of individual homes hasn’t changed very much.

But that’s not what Case-Shiller measures.

The Case-Shiller Index uses what’s called a “repeat sales” methodology. In much simpler terms, it tracks homes that have sold more than once and looks at how the value of the same properties has changed over time.

So this isn’t simply a case of fewer expensive Seattle homes selling and dragging the median down.

There has been some genuine softening in home values across the broader Seattle metropolitan area.

That’s worth paying attention to.

It is also worth keeping in perspective.

A 2% Decline Is Not a Housing Crash

After the housing market we’ve experienced over the past several years, any negative number can feel dramatic.

But let’s put 2% into actual dollars.

A home worth $800,000 declining 2% would represent roughly $16,000 in value.

That’s certainly not nothing.

But it’s also very different from the kind of price collapse people usually picture when they hear that “home prices are falling.”

What we’re seeing looks much more like a market recalibration.

Buyers have more choices. Homes are taking longer to sell. Sellers are competing with more listings. Price reductions have become common. And buyers are increasingly negotiating things that were nearly impossible to ask for during the frenzy a few years ago.

Seller credits, closing-cost assistance, repairs and even mortgage rate buydowns are all back on the table in many transactions.

That changes pricing power.

There Isn’t One “Seattle Housing Market”

There’s another important detail buried in the Case-Shiller number.

When the index says “Seattle,” it isn’t talking only about homes inside Seattle city limits.

It’s measuring the broader Seattle metropolitan housing market.

That’s important because real estate is intensely local.

What is happening with a condo in downtown Seattle can be very different from what’s happening with a single-family home in Edmonds.

Lynnwood can behave differently from Shoreline.

Bothell can behave differently from Everett.

And even within the same city, one neighborhood or price range can move considerably faster than another.

That’s why I wouldn’t tell a homeowner in South Snohomish County that their house lost exactly 2% of its value simply because the Seattle Case-Shiller Index fell 2%.

That’s not how real estate works.

What I’m Seeing Locally

The biggest change I’ve noticed isn’t that buyers suddenly don’t want homes.

It’s that buyers have become much more selective.

There are still homes that hit the market, show beautifully, are positioned correctly and attract immediate attention.

And then there are perfectly good homes sitting on the market much longer than their sellers expected.

Sometimes there isn’t anything obviously “wrong” with them.

I’ve seen listings that experienced agents agree are reasonably priced, professionally marketed and located in desirable areas still struggle to generate offers.

That’s the market we’re in.

Buyers have enough choices that they don’t necessarily have to compromise.

A floor plan they don’t love?

They may keep looking.

A house that feels slightly overpriced?

They may wait.

A seller unwilling to negotiate?

There may be another house down the street.

That is a huge change from the market where buyers often had to decide within hours whether they were willing to compete against ten other offers.

Sellers Need To Adjust Their Expectations

For sellers, this doesn’t mean it’s a bad time to sell.

It does mean the strategy matters more.

The market isn’t automatically forgiving an aggressive list price anymore.

And the old strategy of “let’s start high and see what happens” can actually work against you when buyers have plenty of other homes to choose from.

The first couple of weeks on the market matter.

Pricing, preparation, professional photography, presentation and understanding the competition all become more important when buyers aren’t desperate for inventory.

And perhaps most importantly, sellers need to look at what the market is doing right now, not what the house down the street sold for during a different market environment.

Buyers Have a Different Opportunity

For buyers, a softer market doesn’t necessarily mean waiting for prices to collapse.

It means having leverage.

A house that’s been sitting for several weeks may have a seller who is much more interested in negotiating than they were when the listing first hit the market.

That negotiation doesn’t always have to be about price either.

A seller credit that helps buy down the buyer’s mortgage rate can sometimes have a greater impact on the monthly payment than negotiating another $10,000 off the purchase price.

That’s something buyers should be looking at right now.

Because there’s an interesting possibility hanging over this market:

If mortgage rates eventually move meaningfully lower, some of today’s buyer leverage could disappear as more buyers jump back into the market.

Nobody knows exactly when or if that happens.

But waiting for the “perfect” combination of lower home prices and significantly lower mortgage rates assumes those two things will happen at the same time.

Real estate rarely makes things that convenient.

So, Are Seattle Home Prices Falling?

According to Case-Shiller, yes.

Home values across the broader Seattle metropolitan area were approximately 2% lower in June than they were a year earlier.

That’s real data, and I don’t think we should dismiss it.

But I also don’t think homeowners should read that headline and immediately subtract 2% from the value of their house.

The more useful question is:

What’s happening with homes like yours, in your neighborhood, in your price range, right now?

That’s the number that actually matters.

And in today’s market, the answer can change surprisingly quickly from one neighborhood to the next.

If you’re thinking about buying or selling in South Snohomish County or North King County, I’m always happy to take a closer look at what’s actually happening in your specific area.

Sometimes the national headline tells us something important.

But the homes down the street usually tell us a whole lot more.

One of the questions I hear a lot right now is pretty simple:

“Is this a buyer’s market now?”

I wish the answer were just as simple.

Because right now, I can show you homes where the seller still has plenty of leverage. I can also show you homes where a buyer may be able to negotiate on price, ask for closing costs, secure a rate buydown, negotiate repairs, or potentially get several of those things at once.

And sometimes those homes aren’t even very far apart.

That’s the current 2026 housing market.

The Market Has Become Much More Balanced

For the past several years, we got used to talking about the housing market in pretty broad terms.

It was a seller’s market.

Inventory was tight. Buyers competed. Homes sold quickly. Sellers could often dictate the terms.

That isn’t nearly as universal today.

Currently, the national housing market is currently sitting at roughly 4.6 months of inventory. Generally speaking, somewhere around six months is considered a balanced market.

But here’s the problem with looking only at a national number:

Nobody buys the national housing market.

You buy a house in Lynnwood, Edmonds, Everett, Shoreline, Bothell, Mountlake Terrace or wherever else you happen to be looking.

And even within those communities, the market can look dramatically different from one house to another.

Sometimes the House Determines Who Has the Upper Hand

This may be one of the biggest changes I’ve noticed in our local market.

We don’t simply have a buyer’s market or a seller’s market.

We have a market where leverage can change based on the individual property.

A well prepared home in a desirable neighborhood, with a functional floor plan and a price that makes sense compared with the competition, can still attract buyers quickly.

That seller may have plenty of leverage.

But another home may sit for several weeks.

Maybe the price is just a little ambitious. Maybe the layout isn’t what most buyers want. Maybe it needs updating. Maybe there are several similar homes competing for the same buyer.

Once that happens, the conversation changes.

Suddenly, the buyer may have the leverage.

Our Local Numbers Are Showing It

Look at just one recent week in our local market.

We had:

210 new listings

175 homes go pending

124 homes close

219 price reductions

That last number jumps out.

There were actually more price reductions than new listings during the week.

That doesn’t mean homes aren’t selling. They clearly are. Nearly 175 buyers and sellers reached an agreement during that same period.

What it does tell us is that buyers have become more selective, and sellers can’t automatically assume the market will accept whatever price they put on a home.

If buyers don’t see the value, many are perfectly willing to wait.

Buyers Haven’t Disappeared. They’ve Gotten Pickier.

I think this is one of the most important things for sellers to understand about today’s market.

There are still buyers out there.

But higher mortgage rates and increased inventory have given many of them something they haven’t had much of over the past several years:

Choices.

When buyers have choices, they compare everything.

Price.

Condition.

Location.

Floor plan.

Updates.

Monthly payment.

How long the home has been on the market.

What else they can buy for the same money.

A house doesn’t necessarily have to be the cheapest option. But buyers need to understand why it’s worth the price.

That makes pricing and preparation especially important right now.

Buyers May Have More Negotiating Power Than They Realize

On the buyer side, this market has created some opportunities we simply didn’t see very often during the crazier years.

A home that has been sitting on the market may have a seller who is much more willing to negotiate.

That doesn’t always mean getting $50,000 knocked off the price.

Sometimes the better negotiation is somewhere else.

A seller credit toward closing costs can help reduce the amount of cash a buyer needs at closing.

A seller funded mortgage rate buydown can potentially make the monthly payment considerably more comfortable.

Repairs may be negotiable.

And sometimes price is absolutely negotiable.

The important thing is understanding the seller’s position before deciding what to ask for.

A home that hit the market yesterday and already has significant activity is a very different negotiation from one that has been available for 47 days and already had a price reduction.

Sellers Still Have Leverage Too

None of this means sellers have lost control of the market.

Good homes are still selling.

And when a property checks the boxes buyers care about and is positioned correctly from day one, sellers can still create competition.

That’s why I wouldn’t tell a seller, “It’s a buyer’s market, so expect to give everything away.”

I’d tell them that today’s buyers are more discerning and the margin for error has gotten smaller.

Overpricing by even a little can cost valuable momentum.

Poor presentation can make the competing house look like the better value.

And waiting several weeks to react to what the market is telling you can sometimes make the eventual adjustment more painful.

So Who Has the Upper Hand?

Right now?

It depends.

It depends on the city.

It depends on the neighborhood.

It depends on the price range.

It depends on the property type.

It depends on the condition.

It depends on the competition.

And increasingly, it depends on how long that particular home has been sitting on the market.

That’s what makes this market so interesting.

Two buyers looking five miles apart may be dealing with completely different negotiating environments. Two sellers in the same city may have completely different experiences.

The days of making broad assumptions about what “the market” is doing aren’t especially useful right now.

The better question is:

What’s happening with the specific home, price range and neighborhood you’re dealing with?

That’s where you’ll find out who really has the upper hand.

The local real estate market was remarkably steady this past week. New listings, closed sales, and price reductions barely moved from the week before, while pending sales provided the most notable change with a solid increase.

This Week’s Stats

New Listings: 210 ↑ 1 (209 last week)
Pending Sales: 175 ↑ 11 (164 last week)
Sold Homes: 124 ↑ 1 (123 last week)
Price Reductions: 219 ↓ 1 (220 last week)

Weekly Trend Overview

If there was ever a week that could be described as “steady,” this was it.

New listings increased by just one home, closed sales increased by one, and price reductions decreased by one. Essentially, those three categories were unchanged from the previous week.

The more interesting number is pending sales.

Pending activity increased from 164 to 175, a gain of nearly 7%. That suggests buyers are continuing to engage with the market and write offers when they find the right combination of home, location, condition, and price.

At the same time, we still had 219 price reductions during the week, which is actually more than the number of homes that went pending. That continues to reinforce one of the biggest themes of this summer: buyers have choices, and they are being selective.

What This Means for Buyers

This continues to be a market where buyers can afford to be more deliberate than they could during the frenzy of a few years ago.

Inventory is continuing to come onto the market, and price reductions remain common. That can create opportunities not only to negotiate on price, but potentially on seller-paid closing costs, rate buydowns, repairs, or other terms depending on the property.

But the increase in pending sales is also a reminder that good homes are still selling. A home that is well prepared, properly priced, and attractive to buyers can absolutely generate competition.

The opportunity right now is having choices without assuming every seller is desperate to negotiate.

What This Means for Sellers

The 219 price reductions this week are an important number for anyone thinking about selling.

Buyers are paying attention to value, and they have enough options that an overpriced home can quickly get passed over. Once a listing spends several weeks on the market, a price adjustment may be necessary to bring buyers back through the door.

That makes getting the pricing and preparation right from the beginning especially important.

At the same time, 175 homes went pending this week. Buyers haven’t disappeared. They’re simply being more selective about which homes earn their attention and ultimately their offers.

For sellers, the goal isn’t just getting your home on the market. It’s positioning it correctly against the competition from day one.

If you’re considering buying or selling in South Snohomish County or North King County, I’d be happy to take a closer look at what these numbers mean for your specific neighborhood and price range.