Asheville-area vacation-home purchases drop 66.3% amid market cooling

Vacation-home purchases in the Asheville area fell 66.3%, a steep drop that points to real cooling in one of Buncombe County’s most pressure-packed housing segments. For residents trying to buy or stay put in Asheville, the more important question is not whether the vacation-home boom has slowed, but whether that slowdown will finally change prices, inventory and neighborhood turnover.

The answer appears to be only partially. The retreat in second-home demand should shave some competition from the top of the market, especially in areas most exposed to short-term rentals and discretionary buyers. But Buncombe County still faces a tight housing supply, and the broader market is not resetting to a level that would produce quick affordability gains for year-round residents.

That is the same market that had already been moving toward normalization before Hurricane Helene hit on Sept. 28, 2024. Carolina Realtors said the Asheville region and Asheville MSA had more than 3,400 homes for sale and 4.2 months of supply at the end of August 2024, a sign inventory was improving after the pandemic frenzy. Then activity slumped. By the end of October 2024, new listings were down 43.5% year over year, pending contracts were down 39.7%, showing activity had fallen 27.1%, and more than 300 homes had been withdrawn or taken off the market, with an estimated value of $272 million.

Those shifts carried into 2024’s year-end totals, when the Asheville region recorded 9,344 home sales, down 6.7% from 2023. Nearly 9,500 pending contracts were down 5.7%, even as new listings rose 5.3% to nearly 13,300. By early 2026, Buncombe County home sales had fallen from 431 in the first quarter of 2025 to 394 in the first quarter of 2026, while the City of Asheville saw sales edge up from 242 to 255. Median prices softened too, with Buncombe County slipping from $450,000 to $446,000 in that same quarter.

Outside analysts show the market remains expensive even as it cools. Redfin put Asheville’s median sale price at $499,742 over the three months ending in April 2026, down 3.0% from a year earlier, and said homes were taking 117 days to sell on average, up from 55 days a year before. Realtor.com reported Buncombe County’s median listing price at $575,000 in April, with a median sold price of $452,250, 2,518 active listings and a median of 69 days on market.

The vacation-home decline also lands in a region where tourism still shapes housing demand. Asheville’s city rules allow whole-home short-term vacation rentals only in the Resort Zoning District, while homestays are limited to owner-occupied homes in residential zones. WUNC reported 5,268 short-term rentals in Buncombe County in 2022, about 4.5% of the county’s housing stock, with Asheville accounting for a little more than 1,000 of those units.

That helps explain why a 66.3% drop in vacation-home purchases matters, but only up to a point. Less speculative demand may ease pressure in some neighborhoods, yet limited inventory, high borrowing costs and tourism-driven ownership economics still leave full-time Buncombe residents facing a market that is less overheated, not suddenly affordable.