Published October 17, 2026 in Market Update

Alpharetta Homes That Took Over Six Months to Sell Got 85.8% of What They First Asked

By Tommy Williams

Real estate, Alpharetta Market Update Cleaned

January and February 2026 were hard months to sell in Alpharetta. The typical home took 52 days to find a buyer in January. February was worse: 82 days. Sellers who listed in those months and did not move fast enough paid for it. The typical February sale closed at 90.5% of what the home first asked. That is not a small gap.

Spring changed everything, and then September changed it back.

April was the turning point. Days to sell dropped to 16. Sellers started getting full price: the typical April sale closed at 100% of the last asking price. May was even tighter, at 10 days and 99.8% of what the home first asked. June and July held steady. Then September arrived.

September 2026 tells a different story. The typical home took 50 days to sell. Sellers got 93.9% of what they first asked. Only 2 new contracts were signed all month, against 31 new listings. That is 15.5 new listings for every buyer who committed. ==The market did not slow down gradually. It stopped.

The first half versus the second half looks almost identical on paper. Prices up slightly. Days down slightly. But those averages hide what is happening at the edges. The homes that sold quickly in spring pulled the numbers up. The homes sitting right now are pulling them back down.

The longer a home sits, the more it costs the seller.

This is the clearest finding in the data. Homes that sold in the first month got 100% of what they first asked. Every extra month on the market cost the seller more. By month three, the typical seller got 93.1% of their first price. By month four, 90.5%. Homes that took more than six months got 85.8%.

The gap between month one and month six-plus is 14.2 percentage points. Sellers often think dropping the price later will fix a slow start. The data says otherwise. A price cut gets buyers back in the door, but it does not fully close the gap that waiting created.

Right now, 64.7% of the 116 homes for sale in Alpharetta have already dropped their price. The typical cut is $56,000. That is a lot of sellers learning this lesson after the fact. ==The homes that priced right on day one never had to make that call.

There is one more number worth knowing. In this market, 1,864 lived-in homes came off the market without ever selling. That is 59.7 homes that gave up for every 10 that sold. The typical home that gave up first asked $549,900. The typical home that sold first asked $848,500. Those are two very different price points, and they attracted two very different buyer pools in Alpharetta.

What this means if you are buying or selling in Alpharetta right now.

If you are selling, the spring window is closed for now. September showed what happens when listings pile up and buyers pull back. That does not mean you cannot sell. It means the price has to be right on day one, the home has to show well, and the marketing has to reach the right buyer fast. Homes priced at $550,000 to $750,000 that sold quickly still closed at 100% of the last asking price. The opportunity is there. It is just less forgiving than it was in May.

If you are buying, you have more room than you did six months ago. The last confirmed bidding war in this data went under contract on August 23 in Windgate. In the 40 days after that, 10 more homes went under contract with no bidding wars recorded. Rates are not helping: the 30-year fixed averaged 7.28% as of October 1, 2026, up from 6.34% a year ago, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey. But the homes that have been on the market since spring have already taken price cuts, and sellers who have been waiting are more motivated than they were.