Maryland’s housing market has continued a multiple-month trend of rising prices and cooling activity that began in February.
Overall, the number of housing units sold dipped by 9.1% in the state year over year, slowing from 6,411 trades in August 2024 to 5,830 in August 2025, according to data from the Maryland Association of Realtors. Although sales fell, the average price rose 4.5% year over year to $519,410.
As prices rose for the month, the units under contract in August 2025 increased by a few hundred from the same time last year. The number of active and new listings contracted, however, while the median number of days a listing spent on the market ratcheted up from 10 to 16.
“Maryland’s housing market is showing signs of transition, with active listings up 34% year-over-year to more than 19,000 homes and median prices rising 3% to $435,000," said Homes.com senior director of market analytics Melina Duggal. "This places Maryland seventh nationally for inventory growth and 25th for price appreciation. While the increase in listings reflects more homes available to buyers, it also suggests that properties are staying on the market longer, a sign that buyers may have more options and negotiating power.”
Yolanda Muckle, a Long and Foster broker who specializes in Maryland counties, including Prince George's, Montgomery, Howard and Anne Arundel, boiled it down in a few words.
“It’s still supply and demand,” Muckle said, and demand is not as high as it was last year.
It's ‘leveling out to be an even market’
Some counties bucked state trends: In Somerset and Talbot, sales and prices were up.
Frederick County — about an hour and a half from Washington, D.C., by car — mirrored what was happening in the rest of the state. The roughly 89,500-person region saw the number of homes sold dip 17.4%, from 379 in August 2024 to 313 in August 2025. Its average sales price rose by 3.6% to $556,877.
“What you’re seeing, in my opinion, is it’s kind of leveling out to be an even market,” said Tyler Charles, a Long and Foster real estate agent who was born and raised in Frederick. “It’s a very unique market because of all the growth that is happening in Frederick that’ll continue to happen probably for the next 20 years.”
Development in downtown Frederick, including a Whole Foods-anchored shopping center and a boutique hotel, has helped boost property prices around the area, especially in certain pockets, but of late “you’re seeing a home stay on the market for 30, 45 days with one of two price reductions before they sell,” he said.
'You still have to have homes priced correctly'
Some of Maryland’s inside-the-Beltway counties are seeing the number of transactions fall, but sales of luxury homes are inching up in average sales price.
Liz Lavette Shorb, a broker with Washington Fine Properties in Montgomery County, has sold eight properties with price tags topping $3 million so far this year, compared to one by the same time in 2024. Shorb is selling more homes north of $1 million and $2 million, too, she said.
“So, to me, that tells me that our August market year over year was actually stronger,” said Shorb, who has more than three decades in the industry. “The feeling out there is that we’re also going to have a strong fall.”
In Montgomery County, the state's second-wealthiest enclave, Shorb is seeing lower interest rates nudge some buyers off the sidelines. “If a seller positioned their house properly, they’re in a great position to attract those buyers,” she said, “but if they come out overpriced, we’re still seeing the buyers just don’t latch onto that.”
The houses that are suffering, Shorb said, are the ones purchased during the COVID-19 pandemic in multiple-offer situations when “somebody just really went up high or they paid a big premium to get something off-market.”
Unless these properties truly have qualities that substantiate that price inflation, they’re taking “5% to 10% hits when they came back on,” she said.
When it comes to homes in Prince George's County, noted Yolanda Muckle, it’s also a matter of self-aware pricing.
“You still have to have homes priced correctly,” said Muckle, who’s worked her markets for more than two decades and was the 2023 president of the Maryland Association of Realtors. “It’s still technically a seller’s market … but it’s not like it was where houses were flying off the market in less than a month.”
As an example, Muckle pointed toward a house she listed for $750,000 that went under contract in August for $775,000.
“It did not appraise at $775,000; it appraised at $764,000,” she said. “The market generated the activity to get a multiple-offer situation.”
If they had listed that home for what it sold for, Muckle said, it was “highly unlikely they would have even gotten two offers, let alone the one that they got.”