How Two Winter Storms Impacted Greenville Real Estate and What It Means Moving Forward
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Greenville is not exactly known for getting knocked off rhythm by winter weather. A cold snap might dust the grass, a few side streets might get slick, and life usually keeps moving. January 2026 did not follow that script.
Two winter events hit over two separate weekends in the same month, and the result was a real-time stress test for the local housing market. Not a crash. Not a collapse. More like a moment where you could watch the machine slow down, then see which parts kept humming anyway.
Because that’s the part worth paying attention to: even with two storm weekends cutting into showings, appraisals, inspections, and closings, several key indicators stayed surprisingly sturdy. Others clearly took a hit. Put together, the month offers a clean lesson in how Greenville behaves when momentum meets weather.
Two Winter Storms Impacted Greenville Real Estate in January 2026
The headline takeaway is simple. Two Winter Storms Impacted Greenville Real Estate most clearly in the places where timing matters most: pendings, closings, and days on market. But the storms did not stop sellers from listing, and they did not stop prices from rising.
That mix matters. It suggests January was more of a temporary slowdown than a turning point, with a high likelihood of activity spilling into February.
New listings stayed positive, even with the shutdown weekends
New listings are often the toughest number to derail. A homeowner planning to list typically still lists, even if the forecast looks ugly. And that showed up in the data.
January 2026 posted 1,979 new listings, compared to 1,908 in January 2025. That’s a 3.7% year-over-year increase in a month that included two winter storm weekends.
It is hard to see that as anything other than a sign of underlying seller confidence. December had been softer, but January did not follow it down. If anything, January’s resilience hints at stronger listing activity in the early part of the year.
There was also a clear suspicion baked into the numbers: without those two storm weekends, January might have landed closer to 10% above the prior year. No one can prove the alternate timeline, but it fits the logic. When the market still posts gains with two major interruptions, it usually means demand was there, and timing got in the way.
Pending sales slipped into the negatives, barely
Pending sales are more sensitive. This is the category where weather swings the needle because it directly affects showings, buyer urgency, and the ability to physically move transactions forward.
January 2025 recorded 1,356 pending sales. January 2026 posted 1,347. That’s a 1.7% year-over-year decrease, essentially break-even, but technically negative.
And the reason is not complicated. When storms hit on weekends, they don’t just make driving inconvenient. They wipe out prime showing windows. They disrupt inspections. They cancel open houses. They slow momentum, and in a market where pace matters, momentum is often the difference between “under contract” and “we’ll wait another week.”
This was also the first negative pending-sales month in quite a while, which is notable, but not alarming. The expectation tied to this kind of month is that February absorbs the spillover.
Closings took the biggest hit, and it makes sense
If pendings are where momentum slows, closings are where delays show up loudest.
January 2025 had 988 closed sales. January 2026 had 900. That’s an 8.9% year-over-year decline, and it landed as the lowest closed-sales month since 2023.
This is exactly what storm disruption does in a market like Greenville’s. Closings often require multiple people and moving parts to align: lenders, appraisers, inspectors, contractors, attorneys, buyers, sellers, and the schedule that ties them together. Remove two weekends from the month, and you can push a meaningful chunk of closings into the next month.
Nothing about this reads like a fundamental demand problem. It reads like the calendar got chopped up.
Days on market jumped to a post-COVID high
The other “storm signature” was time.
Days on market until sale climbed to 67 days, up from 61 days the year before. That’s a 9.8% increase, and the highest reading since the slow, uncertain stretch of early 2020.
A spike like that is not surprising in a month where the market loses weekend momentum twice. It’s especially punishing for listings that hit the market mid-month, right when buyers were distracted, roads were messy, and the weekend showing cycle was disrupted.
The most important lesson here is practical, not theoretical: the first one to two weeks of a listing is where the listing has its strongest natural buzz. That window is hard to recreate once it’s missed. January showed exactly how the weather can “deflate the balloon” if marketing changes or new listings hit the market right into a storm system.
That does not mean sellers should never list during winter weather. Sometimes timelines are non-negotiable. But January reinforced that timing matters and that weather is not neutral, especially when it hits on weekends.
Prices kept rising, storm or no storm
Here’s what the storms did not touch.
The median sales price increased 2.8% year over year, moving from $305,000 in January 2025 to $313,500 in January 2026. That is close to a $10,000 jump in a single year, in a month where the market was repeatedly interrupted.
Average sales price rose as well, up 1.5% year over year to $390,403.
Those numbers matter because they undercut the idea that winter storms “softened” the market in any meaningful pricing sense. The storms slowed the pipeline, but pricing power stayed intact.
The percent of list price received remained flat at 97.7%, and January is typically the lowest month for this metric anyway. In plain terms, January tends to be the month when sellers accept a little less than peak-season conditions. The storms didn’t change that pattern.
Affordability quietly improved, and the revision mattered
One of the most encouraging notes was the housing affordability index.
January came in at 102, matching January 2025. More importantly, data revisions showed five straight months over 100, which is exactly where it should be. That threshold matters because it means the median household income can afford the median-priced home, factoring in mortgage rates.
There was also context for why the revisions happened. This index includes lagging inputs like updated median income data. When those get refreshed, past months can shift.
In an environment where the “American dream” gets talked about like it’s optional, a sustained stretch above 100 is a real win.
Mortgage rates helped support that outcome. The 30-year fixed rate cited from Mortgage News Daily sat at 6.04% on February 17, and it had come down after cooler-than-expected inflation data.
Inventory growth was the bigger story beneath the storms
Inventory continued its upward trend, and that is the backdrop that keeps prices from running too hot.
January inventory was 5,241 homes for sale, up from 4,210 in January 2025. That’s a 24.5% increase, nearly 25% more homes available than the prior year.
That is a big deal for buyers, and it is a major reason prices have not surged even harder. Supply is rising while demand remains steady, and that balance keeps appreciation “strong” without turning “wild.”
Months of supply increased from 3.0 to 3.5 year over year. That half-month jump is meaningful but not extreme compared to recent trends, and it still signals a market that leans seller.
There was also a clear line in the sand about what would truly change the vibe. Traditional thinking says six months flip to a buyer’s market, but the argument here was different. With new construction influencing everything, 4.5 months is the level that would “completely feel” like a buyer’s market. At 3.5, Greenville is still about a month away from that feeling.
What January taught buyers and sellers about strategy
January 2026 offered a clean reminder that the market is not just numbers, it’s timing.
For sellers:
Weather can sabotage momentum, especially in the first two weeks of a listing.
January tends to be the lowest month for percent of list price received, so expectations should match the calendar.
Changing marketing during storm disruption risks wasting the exact moment when a listing should be building buzz.
For buyers:
Storm months can create temporary openings: fewer competing showings, slower weekend traffic, and sellers who are tired of delays.
More inventory means more options, and January’s inventory jump supports that trend.
If February rebounds as expected, the calm window may be shorter than it looks.
The big question: did the storms hit supply or demand more
The most interesting forward-looking question was not about January itself. It was about what January might do to February.
The working assumption was that storms likely hit demand more than supply, meaning buyers paused harder than sellers did. If that’s true, February could show inventory dropping as demand snaps back and deals catch up. But it was also framed as a guess, because Greenville rarely has two winter events in the same month, making this a tough pattern to model.
Either way, the setup is familiar: January slows the pipeline, February absorbs the backlog, and the market resumes its natural rhythm.
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Bottom Line
January 2026 was the month Two Winter Storms Impacted Greenville Real Estate in ways buyers and sellers could feel immediately. New listings still rose year over year, which points to steady seller confidence and a market with momentum underneath the noise. Pendings slipped just barely, closings dropped more sharply, and days on market climbed, all consistent with two weekends of weather disruption. Yet prices kept rising, list-to-sale ratios held steady, affordability improved into a healthier range, and inventory climbed nearly 25% year over year. The storms didn’t change the direction of the market. They changed the timing. And that timing likely sets up February to look stronger as delayed activity catches up.
Ien Araneta
Journal & Podcast Editor | Selling Greenville
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