Forgotten Coast Real Estate Market Report Week of August 24 – 30, 2026

The Corridor Carried August Out the Door

Every year the last week of August gets written off before it starts. The renters are checking out, the buyers are supposedly waiting on Labor Day, and nobody expects much to happen. Vacation traffic has thinned enough that you can get a table at lunch without planning around it.

Quiet on the sand, busy on the closing table. 17 homes closed on the Forgotten Coast, the most of any week in August, and 10 of them came from a single stretch of road. This was not the top of the market doing the work. It was the middle.

Three numbers frame the week. Closings went 11, 11, 15, and now 17 across the four weeks of August, a second straight weekly increase. The pending pipeline grew again to 22 homes under contract from 21. And active inventory ticked up to 568 from 566, which sounds like the wrong direction until you notice the month started at 571 and has barely moved since. Inventory here is not building. It is holding still while the sales pace climbs underneath it.

The average sale price fell to $724,453 from $912,170, and that drop is a good thing rather than a bad one. Last week two island sales at $2 million and $3.7 million pulled the whole coast's average up with them. This week nothing crossed $1.85 million and the bulk of the business happened between $250,000 and $700,000. Total residential volume still came in at $12.32 million. More houses, smaller tickets, roughly the same money. That is a market working through its middle inventory, which is the part that has to move before anything else does.

St. Joe Beach and Mexico Beach

The corridor had the best single week any area on this coast has posted all month. 10 closings, double last week's 5, ranging from $253,900 up to $1,175,000 and averaging $555,480. No other area put more than 6 on the board in any week of August. This one did 10.

Run that pace against 216 active listings and the corridor reads 5.0 months of supply, the tightest number on the coast this week and the tightest reading any of the four areas has produced in August. Inventory came down again too, from 218, which makes five straight weekly declines in this corridor. 9 homes remain under contract.

Here is what I would tell a seller between St. Joe Beach and Mexico Beach. Ten of your neighbors just closed in a single week, most of them under $700,000, and the buyers who did it were not chasing bargains. They were paying fair prices for houses that were priced fairly to begin with. If your listing has been sitting through August while that happened around you, the market has already told you what the problem is.

Cape San Blas and the South Gulf

3 closings on the Cape, from $675,000 to $1,845,000, averaging $1,100,000. That top sale is the highest price paid anywhere on the coast this week, and it makes three consecutive weeks the Cape has averaged above $1.1 million. Nowhere else on this coast holds that kind of price week after week.

The concern out there is not price. It is what is lined up behind it. Active inventory climbed to 149 listings, up every single week in August from 139, and only 1 home sits under contract. That is one pending sale against 149 actives, well under one percent, and it is the thinnest pipeline on the coast this week by both count and ratio. Port St. Joe and St. George Island each have 6 pending against far smaller inventories.

At three sales a week the Cape reads 11.5 months of supply, wider than last week's 8.3. Buyers, that is your opening. The Cape is still the most expensive real estate on this coast and it currently has the least competition standing between you and a contract.

St. George Island

The island closed 2 homes again, at $1,400,000 and $1,450,000, for an average of $1,425,000. Two sales inside $50,000 of each other is unusual on an island where the top and bottom of the market are usually a couple million apart. Last week the island's two closings were $2,000,000 and $3,700,000.

The number worth watching is the pipeline. 6 homes are under contract on St. George Island, up from 2, and that is the strongest pending count the island has shown all month. Active inventory has crept up every week in August to 114 listings, and on the week's pace that still reads 13.2 months of supply, essentially flat against last week's 13.0 and the softest of the four residential markets we cover. If those six contracts close in September, that picture changes fast. Until they do, the island remains the place on this coast where a patient buyer has the most room to work.

Port St. Joe

Town took a breather. 2 closings, at $285,900 and $325,000, averaging $305,450. Both landed squarely in the range that keeps people living here year-round, and both were the kind of house that sells to somebody who works in the county rather than visits it.

Two sales is a small number, and it pushes town's supply reading from 5.3 months up to 10.3 in a single week. I am not going to dress that up. What I will point out is that active inventory in Port St. Joe fell to 89 listings, the lowest count anywhere in town this month, and 6 homes are still under contract, holding steady for a second straight week. Fewer listings, a full pipeline, and a slow closing week. Two of those three are good. The third is arithmetic that will fix itself the moment a couple of those pending contracts fund.

The Land Market

Land went quiet. 2 lots closed coast-wide against 6 a week ago, the slowest week for dirt in all of August. Port St. Joe moved a parcel at $208,000, its second lot sale in two weeks, and St. George Island moved one at $155,000. Cape San Blas and the St. Joe Beach corridor both recorded zero.

The supply side keeps growing. 405 active lots sit on the market coast-wide, up every week in August from 393, with only 4 parcels under contract. At two sales a week that math produces a supply figure north of 46 months, and while a number that large is more a symptom of a tiny sample than a real forecast, the direction of it has been consistent for a month. Cape San Blas alone carries 151 active lots with 2 under contract.

If you are buying land on the Forgotten Coast, you are negotiating from the strongest position available in this market, and you have been for a while. If you are trying to sell a lot, price is the only lever you have. There are not enough buyers in the pipeline for anything else to matter.

What the Pace Actually Means

Seventeen sales a week projects to roughly 74 homes a month. Against 568 active listings that reads 7.7 months of supply, the tightest single week figure I have recorded in August and a real improvement on the 12.0 the coast posted in the first two weeks of the month.

The smoothed number agrees this time, which has not always been the case. Average the last three weeks and the coast has been closing about 14 homes a week, putting the three-week supply reading at 9.2 months, down from the 10.6 I published last week. Both the weekly figure and the trend line moved the same direction. After a month of those two telling different stories, that agreement is the most encouraging thing in this week's data.

The four areas have spread back out. The corridor sits at 5.0 months, Port St. Joe at 10.3, Cape San Blas at 11.5, and St. George Island at 13.2. A week ago, the top three were bunched between 5.3 and 10.1. What separates them now is not desirability, it is price band. The tighter markets are the ones doing business under $700,000. The softer ones are the ones asking for seven figures. That has been true on this coast all summer and nothing this week argues against it.

So the read splits cleanly. Sellers under $700,000, you are in the fastest market on the coast right now and you have about six weeks of prime season left to use it. Sellers above $1 million, your buyer exists but there are fewer of them and they are taking their time, so your price has to be right on the first try. Buyers, you still hold leverage on the Cape, on the island, and on nearly any vacant lot from Indian Pass to Alligator Point.

This weekly report tracks residential and land activity across Port St. Joe, Cape San Blas, Mexico Beach, St. Joe Beach, and St. George Island, giving buyers and sellers a real-time read on where the Forgotten Coast real estate market stands each week.

What September Looks Like From Here

Labor Day is the hinge. After this weekend the crowds thin for good, the water is still warm enough to swim in through October, and the fishing gets serious. Locals know the drill. September and October are the months we keep for ourselves, and they happen to be the months when the most motivated buyers on this coast finally show up, because they waited out the summer rates and the summer traffic on purpose.

22 homes are under contract heading into that stretch, the most all month. Picture the last week of October out here. Cool mornings on the bay, redfish in the grass, and a for sale sign that came down in September because somebody priced it like they meant it. That is a real outcome available to a good number of people reading this. The rest of it is up to what the inventory decides to do about price between now and then.

Key Metrics Summary

Area Detail

Vacant Land Detail

If you're thinking about buying or selling this fall and want a straight read on what the data means for your situation, reach out. No pressure, just a real conversation about the market from someone who lives and works here.