One market cooled hardest. Another just took its place.

In June, Mercer Island had the highest buyer interest of any market we track and was the only one where demand rose. One month later, it posted the steepest drop of the year — and Edmonds took its place at the top. Same nine communities, opposite story. Here's what that actually means, and what it doesn't.

The reversal, in numbers

NWMLS showings data for July 2026 versus June:

• Mercer Island — buyer interest fell from 5.9 to 4.3 showings per listing, with total showings down 29.7% on the month. June's hottest market by a wide margin is now roughly at the county average.
• Edmonds — buyer interest rose from 4.9 to 5.2, the highest of any market we track in July, with showings up 15.9% — the largest monthly gain in the group.

Put side by side, it looks like a story about two markets trading places. It's really a story about two very different kinds of markets behaving exactly as their size would predict.

Why Mercer Island swings this hard

Mercer Island is a roughly 25,000-person island with a fixed, small supply of homes, most of them priced at $2M and above. A handful of showings, one way or the other, moves the percentage a long way — that's simple math on a small denominator, not evidence that the island suddenly became less desirable. June's 5.9 was likely overstated by the same effect that made July's 4.3 look like a collapse. Neither number should be read as the island's "true" level of demand; the honest read is somewhere between the two, and the trend requires a few more months to see clearly.

Why Edmonds moved the other way

Edmonds is a bigger, more liquid market with more transactions to average across, which makes its July jump more informative than Mercer Island's July drop. A waterfront Snohomish County city served by Sounder rail and ferry access, with a median home value near $850K — well under the county figure — Edmonds offers genuine value relative to King County's Eastside cities. That combination (real transit access, real affordability, real waterfront) is a durable demand driver, not a one-month fluke, which is part of why we've flagged Edmonds as a market to watch in more than one edition of this report.

The lesson for buyers and sellers

• Thin markets lie more than they tell you. In a market with dozens of monthly sales, a single unusual closing barely moves the average. In a market with a handful, one unusual closing is the average that month. Weight small-sample swings accordingly, in either direction.
• A market cooling from "extremely hot" to "average" is not the same as a market becoming undesirable. Mercer Island at 4.3 buyer interest is still a perfectly healthy market — it simply stopped being the outlier it was in June.
• Consistent, if less dramatic, moves deserve more weight than a single sharp one. Edmonds trending up over multiple editions of this report is a more reliable signal than either city's July number in isolation.

If you're deciding where to buy or how to price a sale, the one-month number is a headline. The conversation about your specific street and price band — which is where a thin-market swing either matters enormously or not at all — is the one worth having with us directly.

Figures: NWMLS Showings Report, July 2026 versus June 2026. See Mercer Island and Edmonds neighborhood guides for local context, or the full August report for all nine communities.