OPELIKA — There are a lot more houses for sale in Lee County than there were a year ago, and they are selling for about what they sold for last summer. Both of those things are new, and together they explain why the local market feels different this fall than it did in 2024 or 2025.
Closed residential sales in the Auburn-Opelika area rose 12.2% in June, from 229 a year earlier to 257, according to the Alabama Center for Real Estate at the University of Alabama, which compiles Lee County Association of Realtors data. Active listings jumped 27.7% over the same span, to 904. At June’s sales pace, that inventory represents 3.5 months of supply, up from 3.1 months in June 2025.
Prices flat, asking prices easing
The area’s median sales price in June was $390,000 — unchanged, 0.0%, from June 2025, and down 2.5% from May. Asking prices are drifting the other way: Realtor.com’s county snapshot in mid-September showed a median listing price of $420,866, down 3.6% year over year, at $200 per square foot. Homes were taking a median 48 days to sell, up from about 45 a year ago. Median asking rent stood at $1,922 a month, up 6.8% from last year even though it slipped 8.5% from August.
Those are two different measures — what sellers are asking versus what buyers actually paid — and they should not be read as one trend. What they agree on is direction: more choice, less urgency.
Is this a buyer’s market?
Not quite, whatever the listing sites say. Realtor.com classifies Lee County as a “cool” market rather than a buyer’s market, and 3.5 months of supply is still well below the roughly six months that usually marks an even fight. Buyers have leverage they did not have in 2024. Sellers have not lost the county.
Demand keeps arriving. Lee County’s population reached an estimated 189,881 as of July 1, 2025, the most recent Census Bureau estimate, up 1.1% in a year and 8.9% above its 2020 census base of 174,337. It is Alabama’s eighth-most populous county.
New construction, and the pause
New homes accounted for 81 of June’s 257 closings — 31.5% of the market — at a median of $403,600, down 1.3% from a year earlier. Permit activity has cooled from its winter peak: the Census Bureau counted 199 single-family permits in the Auburn-Opelika metro in February, then 163 in March, 170 in April, 184 in May, 130 in June and 160 in July.
Some of that slowdown is by design. In February the Opelika City Council voted 4-1 to impose a temporary moratorium on approvals for residential subdivisions and multi-dwelling projects. By its own terms, the moratorium took effect May 1, 2026 and runs through April 30, 2027 unless the council extends, modifies or repeals it, and it exempts permit applications already filed, conditional-use and preliminary-plat approvals granted before May 1, projects under binding development agreements, plans conforming to an approved PUD, developments outside the city limits that are not seeking annexation, essential repairs, and mobile-home replacements in existing parks.
During the pause, the ordinance directs the Planning Commission to study how multi-dwelling development affects water, sewer, power, first responders, roads, schools and parks; review zoning and design rules; gather public input; and bring the council recommendations. What that report says will shape 2027 supply more than any interest-rate move.
Rental housing is getting its own attention at City Hall: the council took up a residential rental licensing ordinance this week.
Property taxes
Lee County’s median annual property tax bill is about $1,252, roughly 0.48% of a median home value of $262,200, according to Census American Community Survey five-year estimates. That is toward the high end within Alabama and low by national standards; published national averages vary enough by source that this story does not put a single figure on the comparison.
This story is not investment, tax or financial advice. Monthly county figures move on small samples — a few dozen closings can shift a median — and no number here substitutes for an appraisal or a conversation with a local agent or lender.
Download the full report: Lee County Real Estate Market Report — September 2026 (PDF, 4 pages) — the complete data table, the moratorium’s exemptions, and every source cited.
Research for this report was AI-assisted; every figure was checked against the source named beside it and reviewed by editor Jerry Katz before publication. Figures that could not be verified against a primary source were left out. Corrections: jerry@opelikadailynews.com
