Rochester NY - Market Update - November 2025
by: Mark Siwiec
Rochester Real Estate: Did I Get It Wrong — Or Did the Market Get Stronger?
About fifteen years ago, I was attending a concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center and a little-known artist named Joe Henry was performing. The venue was small, maybe seven hundred seats—and completely sold out. The performance was scheduled to start at eight o’clock and, at 8:10, nothing was going on. At 8:20, the stage was still quiet. By 8:25, the audience had started to become restless, and you could sense that quiet, collective murmur of impatience. Meanwhile, two rows in front of me sat seven empty spots. I turned to the woman next to me and casually mentioned, “I bet you anything that the concert’s been delayed because of Madonna—Joe Henry’s sister-in-law.”
Not more than a moment later, a hired thug appeared with flashlight in hand leading a small parade of people down the aisle. Sure enough—there she was, the 1990s icon who made cone bras fashionable—flanked by her entourage. I nudged the woman beside me and said, “There she is! It’s Madonna!” The woman dispassionately looked at me and, without blinking, simply said, “So?” before turning back to whatever it was that was more interesting than the arrival of one of the world’s greatest pop stars. It was a perfect New York moment, where a mega-watt celebrity can walk into a room and no one flinches. Lately, I’ve been wondering whether the rest of the country is starting to sound equally unmoved.
A month ago, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I wrote a blog predicting that national uncertainty would keep buyers and sellers on the sidelines through the rest of the year. Americans tend not to make large financial moves during times of instability, and the market had gone ominously quiet. It seemed logical to assume that sales would remain stagnant until the start of the spring market in late January.
Then, October happened. Elysian Homes, my brokerage, had a blockbuster month. Both buyers and sellers showed up in force, closing deals at a pace that made me question my earlier analysis. The market didn’t go dormant. Instead, it roared back to life. Which got me thinking: had I underestimated how quickly consumers recover from disruption these days?
It turns out that my instincts about uncertainty leading to paralysis may be outdated. Recent research in consumer psychology suggests Americans are changing how they process disruption. As crises have multiplied—pandemic, inflation, supply-chain breakdowns, geopolitical tension—people no longer treat each one as exceptional. Disruption has been absorbed into their baseline expectations of “normal.”
During COVID, studies found that many continued making major life decisions—moving, buying, selling—even as the world felt unstable. Since then, consumers have developed a kind of muscle memory for uncertainty: the pause between panic and participation keeps shrinking. They no longer wait for stability before acting; they’ve recalibrated their threshold for risk. The “freeze” response that once held buyers and sellers in place for months now compresses into weeks—or even days.
This may explain why my October prediction missed the mark. Buyers and sellers rebounded faster than history suggested they would. They’ve accumulated enough “crisis experience” that their tolerance for volatility has grown. The shock-pause effect keeps shrinking.
Because buyers are learning to move from crisis to confidence more quickly, they’ve recently been able to take advantage of two meaningful shifts. First, mortgage rates have fallen from 7.26% in January to 6.13% at the end of October, the lowest level in more than a year. For a median-priced Monroe County home of $283,000, that drop translates into roughly $3,200 a year in savings, or about $266 a month. Second, the rate at which home values are increasing has cooled. September’s 0.28% month-over-month uptick annualizes to just over 3%, a pace that feels sustainable rather than speculative.
Sellers, on the other hand, are facing a different kind of recalibration. The homes that are moving most quickly—and commanding top dollar—are those that are in truly excellent condition. Buyers have become more discerning, not less. They’re no longer purchasing simply because something is available; they’re purchasing because it feels finished, intentional, and well cared for. Sellers who resist that reality or assume the frenzy of 2021 still applies are discovering that wishful pricing and deferred maintenance now have consequences. The good news is that the equity gains of the past several years remain largely intact. Values have stabilized, not fallen. Sellers who prepare their homes thoughtfully capitalize on that stability, while those unwilling to make improvements are quietly paying the price.
So, what does the future hold? As we look ahead, we can hope that mortgage rates stay below 6.5% over the coming year, giving buyers a reason to remain engaged. Meanwhile, Rochester’s price appreciation is no longer running at a breakneck pace. We’ve got a tight inventory, still 52% lower than pre-pandemic levels—which means prices are stable, not spiraling. The good news for buyers is that things are moving at a more measured clip. The good news for sellers is that this shortage isn’t going anywhere, so values remain solid.
But the big question is what happens when we step into 2026, a year that’s likely to be politically charged, with control of both the House and the Senate up for grabs. The resilience we’ve seen might just be tested again. The real question is whether this newfound adaptability will hold strong even as the noise gets louder.
Maybe that’s the real headline: we’ve all become a little like that woman at Lincoln Center—so accustomed to disruption that we no longer flinch when the volume spikes. What looks like numbness may actually be discipline: a way of surviving a world that no longer pauses between shocks. Perhaps that collective steadiness, for better or worse, is being woven into the market’s DNA.
If you have any questions or concerns about real estate, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Call me at (585) 330-8750
Email me at mark@elysianhomesny.com
Visit us at elysianhomesny.com