Stillwater, MN 55082 · Single-family homes · Source: Altos Research, report dated August 9, 2026.

Every week I open the Altos report before I open my email, because the numbers usually tell me what my phone is about to. This week they told me the same thing twice.

Thirteen homes came on the market in 55082 this week. Four more are sitting in Coming Soon status. And five went under contract.

Round it however you like — that is roughly two and a half new listings for every home that found a buyer, and closer to three and a half if you count the Coming Soons that are about to hit. You cannot run that ratio for long without it showing up somewhere, and this week it showed up in the Market Action Index, which slipped another point to 46 , down from 48 a month ago.

The Market Action Index Slipped Again

46 today · 48 last month · 40 is the line

The Market Action Index is Altos Research's way of answering "how's the market?" with arithmetic instead of adjectives. It weighs the rate of sales against the standing inventory. Above 30 is a seller's market; the mid-40s is what Altos still labels a Strong Seller's Market . Below 30, negotiating power crosses the table.

At 46 we are comfortably on the seller's side of the ledger. But I want to be straight with you about direction, because direction is what you actually make decisions on. We have now cooled for several consecutive weeks. Prices have not dropped — in a seller's zone they generally do not — but the cushion is thinner than it was in June. If that index keeps drifting toward 40 and then through it, list prices follow. Not immediately. But they follow.

Here is the honest framing: this is not a market that is falling. It is a market that is losing altitude slowly, from a very high starting point. Those are different situations and they call for different pricing strategy.

The Median Is Telling You a Story It Cannot Quite Back Up

$980,000 headline · $570,000 in new supply

The median list price in 55082 hit another all-time high this week at $980,000 . Altos flags it as continued price strength, and on the surface that is exactly what it looks like.

Then look at what is actually arriving. The median price of this week's new listings is $570,000. That is a $410,000 gap between what is coming in the door and what the overall median says the market is worth.

That gap means the headline median is being held aloft substantially by inventory that has already been sitting. When the high end lists and stays listed, it accumulates in the pool and drags the median up — not because values are climbing, but because the expensive homes are not leaving. Meanwhile the fresh, realistically-priced supply is entering well underneath it.

The second confirmation is price per square foot, which came in at $255 and has been drifting down even as the median list price climbs. Rising totals plus falling per-foot pricing is a mix-shift signature. Buyers in 55082 are writing larger checks, but they are also getting materially more square footage for them.

Thirty-Five Percent Cut Their Price. Zero Raised One.

The cleanest signal in the whole report

Of everything in this week's report, this is the line I would circle:

Source: Altos Research, Stillwater MN 55082, single-family, week of August 9, 2026.

More than one in three sellers in this zip code has already cut. Not a single one has raised. And nearly one in five listings is a relist — a home that came off the market and went back on, which usually means a strategy reset, an expired listing, or a fresh start on days-on-market.

In a genuinely hot market you see price increases. You see bidding activity pushing sellers to test higher. We are seeing none of that. What we are seeing is a market where the label still says Strong Seller's Market but the behavior on the ground says sellers are meeting buyers where they are . Both of those things are true at once, and anyone who tells you only one of them is selling you something.

Where the Softness Actually Lives

The quartile nobody talks about

Averages hide things. Stillwater is not one market — it is at least four, and they are not moving together. Here is how 55082 breaks down, each tier representing roughly a quarter of the market:

"Absorbed" = homes that left the market via contract during the period. Source: Altos Research, week of August 9, 2026.

Two things jump out, and neither is where you would expect.

First: the $2 million-plus tier absorbed three homes. The genuine top of the Stillwater market — six thousand square feet, five to ten acres, river-adjacent and estate-caliber — is still transacting. That buyer is less rate-sensitive and more supply-constrained, and when the right property surfaces they move.

Second: the $1.195 million tier absorbed nothing at all. Zero new listings, zero absorbed, sixty-three days on market. That band — call it roughly $900,000 to $1.5 million — is the quietest part of the Stillwater market right now. It is too expensive for the move-up buyer stretching from the $650,000 tier and not distinctive enough to pull the estate buyer down. It is the squeeze point.

Meanwhile the entry tier at $389,000 absorbed four homes and the $657,500 tier turned over in a median of thirty-five days — comfortably the fastest-moving segment in the zip code. Under $700,000 in Stillwater is still a genuinely competitive place to be a buyer.

Rates, and the Saw Blade

Better this week — but we have been here before

Mortgage rates improved modestly this week. I want to be measured about that, because we have watched this pattern all year: down a bit, back up, down again. A saw blade, not a slope. Every time rates tick down we get a burst of showing activity, and every time they tick back up that burst evaporates before it converts to contracts.

The question for the rest of August is whether this move is the start of a trend or another tooth on the blade. I do not know, and I am suspicious of anyone who claims they do. What I will tell you is what I watch instead: showing counts, and the ratio of new listings to new pendings. Those turn before the headlines do. This week that ratio was thirteen to five, and that is the number I am carrying into next week.

Is Stillwater Catching Up to the Rest of the Country?

The question I am getting most often

Fair question, and the honest answer is: partially, and later than most places.

Inventory build-up, rising days on market, widespread price reductions and softening buyer urgency have been the national story for the better part of a year — heaviest in Florida, Texas and the mountain West. Stillwater has been insulated by something those markets do not have: we are a geographically constrained river town twenty-five minutes from the east metro, with a finite amount of historic housing stock and a downtown people genuinely want to live near. You cannot manufacture more of the bluff.

But insulation is not immunity. Sixty-two homes in inventory, thirty-five percent taking price cuts, an index that has cooled for several straight weeks — those are the same early signals, arriving on our schedule rather than Austin's. I do not think we are heading for what Florida experienced. I do think the era of naming a price and waiting is behind us for now, and the sellers who accept that early will out-perform the ones who learn it in October.

This Week in the Valley · Life in the Valley

The Little Mermaid, Under the Stars at Lowell Park

Frosted Glass Creative · Lowell Park, Downtown Stillwater

Shifting gears entirely — and gladly. This week the riverfront belongs to the theater.

The Little Mermaid comes to Lowell Park, staged by our own local company, with the St. Croix rolling past behind the set and the lift bridge lit up over the whole thing. I have watched a lot of things happen in Lowell Park across four generations of my family living in this town — Lumberjack Days parades, art fairs, fireworks over the water, the occasional flood we would all rather forget. Outdoor theater on that lawn is near the top of the list.

There is something almost too fitting about staging a story about the sea on the bank of the St. Croix. The show carries the tunes most families in the audience already know by heart, and it lands squarely in that rare category of evening that works for a six-year-old and a sixty-year-old at the same time. But the reason to go is not the story. It is the fifty or so neighbors who built it — the ones who rehearsed all summer after work, sewed the costumes, ran cable across a public park and turned a stretch of riverbank into a stage. Community theater in a town this size is not a performance you attend. It is a thing your town made.

Bring a blanket or low-back chairs. The lawn slopes gently toward the water, so anywhere from the middle back gives you the set and the river in the same frame. Arrive early enough to walk Main Street first — and know that downtown parking on a show night fills the way it does during Lumberjack Days, so the Second Street ramp and the north end lots are your friends.

Production	The Little Mermaid
Presented By	Frosted Glass Creeative
Where	Lowell Park, 201 Water St. N, Downtown Stillwater, MN 55082
Performances	August 14-16
Tickets	https://frostedglasscreative.com/the-little-mermaid
Good to Know	Outdoor lawn seating — bring blankets or low chairs. Check the company's page for weather calls.

If you go, find me. I am usually somewhere near the back with a blanket and an opinion about the concessions.

Questions I Answered This Week

Straight answers, no hedging