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Five houses came on the market in Carterville in the last week. They arrived within four days of each other, and the price per square foot across them more than doubled. That is the whole post, but the arithmetic is worth seeing.
Five Arrivals, and a 2.05× Spread
| Address | Price | Sq ft | Built | Per sq ft | Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 412 Elles Ave | $174,000 | 1,848 | 1952 | $94 | 3 |
| 616 E Grand Ave | $149,000 | 1,092 | 1940 | $136 | 3 |
| 1112 Line Dr | $250,500 | 1,568 | 2013 | $160 | 6 |
| 701 Natalie Ct | $550,000 | 2,958 | 2016 | $186 | 7 |
| 5934 Chandler Dr | $339,900 | 1,757 | 2025 | $193 | 4 |
Sorted by price per square foot, cheapest first. Three of the 42 active houses do not publish a day count and are excluded from the arrivals count only, never from the listing totals.
The two ends of that table are the ones to look at, because they are almost the same size house.
412 Elles Ave is 1,848 square feet, built 1952, asking $174,000. 5934 Chandler Dr is 1,757 square feet, built 2025, asking $339,900. Chandler is 91 square feet smaller and $165,900 more expensive. Per foot that is $94 against $193.
That is as clean a measure of the new-build premium in this town as you will get, because for once the square footage is not the variable. Whether it is worth $165,900 is a question about your own plans and what a walkthrough of each one turns up — not a question these numbers answer, and we have not been inside either house. One was built seventy-four years ago and one last year, and what that is worth depends entirely on the condition of the older one. But anyone who says new construction costs “a bit more” around here should be shown these two listings side by side.
Against the town as a whole, the arrivals sit high. The median active house in Carterville asks $247,000 at $126 per square foot, and only one of the five new listings came in below that per-foot figure — 412 Elles Ave, at $94. The other four are all above it, three of them well above.
The Market Numbers, and the Year That Keeps Lying
We made this point on September 25 and it is worth repeating because the headline number is so misleading.
| January–July | Houses closed | Median closing price | Median days on market |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 205 | $180,000 | 59.0 |
| 2025 | 275 | $233,000 | 79.0 |
| 2026 | 205 | $219,000 | 59.5 |
January through July, not August. August 2026’s published day count is the one figure in five years that is not a settled median, so it is left out of all three years to keep the comparison honest. Closing price is the median of the monthly medians.
Closings are down 25.5% from 2025. That sounds alarming until you add the third year. Against 2024, Carterville has closed 205 houses against 205 — not approximately the same, exactly the same — while the median closing price is up 21.7%. And houses are selling at essentially the 2024 pace, 59.5 days against 59.0, having been far slower in 2025 at 79.0.
2025 was the outlier, on the high side, in both volume and price. Comparing this year to it produces a scary number and a wrong conclusion. Two years of comparison is the minimum for a town this size, and three is better.
Nearly Two Thirds of Our Listings Have Cut
Of the 22 Carterville houses in our own listing feed, 14 have reduced their asking price. None has raised it. The median reduction is $13,000, about 5.3%. The largest is $50,001 off a two-parcel listing on Michael Ln.
Here is the cross-town detail worth noting. In Marion on Wednesday the same measure came out at 38 of 70, or 54%, with a median cut of exactly the same $13,000. So the typical reduction in both towns is identical; what differs is how many sellers have made one. Carterville sellers have moved more often than Marion sellers, by about ten percentage points. We would not read a cause into that from two towns and one week.
A Check That Came Back Negative
On Wednesday we found something in Marion worth testing elsewhere: builders were not cutting. Five of seven newly built houses there had not moved their price at all, while the resale shelf had cut by a median of $15,000. We suggested a mechanism — a builder carrying construction cost has less room to come down than an owner who bought years ago.
Carterville does not show it. Our feed flags two of its active houses as new construction, and both have cut — $10,000 off 215 E Vermont St and $5,000 off 635 Anderson St. A 2023 house, 1108 Main St, has come down $14,900 as well.
Two houses cannot overturn a finding, and they cannot confirm one either. We are reporting the check because we ran it, and a test you only mention when it agrees with you is not a test. What we can say is that the Marion pattern does not appear here, and anyone carrying it into a negotiation on a new build in Carterville would be carrying an assumption rather than a fact.
What Happened to the Three Houses From September 11
Three weeks ago we built a post around the three Carterville houses then built in the previous two years. Here is where they stand, because following through on old posts is the only way to know whether any of it meant anything.
215 E Vermont St — still for sale, $219,900
1,545 sq ft · built 2026 · 133 days listed · $142/sq ft
Has come down $10,000 since. Of the five houses for sale in Carterville built in 2020 or later, this is now the longest-listed.
1108 Main St — still for sale, $330,000
2,632 sq ft · built 2023 · 83 days listed · $125/sq ft
Has come down $14,900. Still below the town median per square foot, which is what made it interesting in September and still does.
412 Noah Ln — no longer listed
built 2020 · was $295,000 · had been listed around 250 days
It is gone from the active list, and it is not in our closed-sale records. So we do not know that it sold, and we are not going to say it did. A listing leaving the market can mean a sale, an expiry, or a seller who has had enough. It had been sitting longer than any other recently built house in Carterville.
The Shelf, for Context
42 houses are actively for sale in Carterville. Of the 39 publishing a day count, the median has been listed 86 days, and the distribution is the thing: 9 at a month or less, 11 between one and three months, 13 between three and six, and 6 past six months. So just under half the shelf has been sitting more than three months, which is the same picture we described on September 25 and it has not materially changed in a week.
🔮 What Greg Watches Next
Whether 5934 Chandler Dr holds $339,900. At $339,900 it is the most expensive of the five recently built houses for sale here, and it arrived four days ago at $193 a foot into a town whose median is $126. The comparison to keep in mind is 412 Noah Ln, which carried a $295,000 asking price for about 250 days and is now off the market — and we do not know how that ended, which is rather the point. If Chandler sells near its asking price, the premium is real. If it is still listed at Christmas, that tells us something too.
If You Are Buying or Selling Here
Buying: five houses arrived this week across a $401,000 price range, so the arrivals are not clustered and there is something new at most budgets. Ask what the per-foot figure is and what it is buying — age, land, or finish.
Selling: nearly two thirds of the houses you are competing with have already cut, by a median of $13,000. Pricing to the shelf rather than to the closings puts you in a queue where most of the queue has already blinked once.
🏠 Buying or Selling in Carterville? The Answer Is Different for Each.
If you are selling, the question is whether your house lands in the group that moves in two months or the group that is still here at Christmas — and that is mostly decided in the first three weeks. If you are buying, the question is which of the nineteen houses now past three months on the market is actually worth your time. Tell us which side you are on and a SIRE broker will call.
📱 Got a Question About This Market? Text Greg.
Buying? Selling? Not sure where to start? Text Greg Holthaus directly — just tell him you saw his blog. He'll help you think through your decision, match you with the best broker for your situation, and point you in the right direction. He's open to a text any time.
Text Greg · 618.925.8654
Who is Greg Holthaus?
Greg Holthaus is the Owner and Designated Managing Broker of Southern Illinois Realty Experts, with 25+ years in Southern Illinois real estate and more than 10,000 transactions closed. He leads a full-service operation — home sales, mortgage, title, and property management under one roof — with offices in Marion, Herrin, and Carbondale. Meet Greg ›
About the numbers: Active-listing figures come from a pull of active local MLS listing data for ZIP 62918 on October 2, 2026, filtered to single-family houses — 42 houses out of 67 total listings, with land and other property types excluded throughout. Three of the 42 do not publish a day count; they are excluded from day-count and new-arrival figures only, never from the listing totals, which is why the day-count base is 39. “New” means a published day count of 7 or fewer. Closed-sale figures come from local MLS closed-sale data for ZIP 62918, sixty months through August 2026. The three-year table deliberately stops at July. August 2026’s published median days-on-market is the only value in sixty months that does not fall on a whole or half day, which means it is not a settled median of whole-day counts but a figure for a month still being tallied — the same signature we found in Marion on September 30, so it is a property of the most recent month rather than a one-off. Rather than quote it or silently mix it in, all three years are shown January through July. Price-change figures describe only the 22 Carterville houses carried in our own brokerage feed, because that is the only set for which we can see a previous asking price; the 42-house figures describe the whole ZIP. The two groups are not interchangeable. A price-change record shows the most recent change and the price before it, so a house that has cut more than once shows only its latest step and the total reductions here are understated rather than overstated. The new-construction comparison rests on two houses — the number our feed flags as new construction in Carterville — and two houses settle nothing in either direction. The flag is the feed’s own and is narrower than “recently built”: five active houses were built in 2020 or later, and only two carry the flag. A listing leaving the market is not evidence that it sold, which is why 412 Noah Ln is described as no longer listed rather than as sold; it does not appear in our closed-sale records. All asking prices are on homes currently for sale, not closed sales. Price per square foot is calculated from listed price and published square footage, rounded to the nearest dollar; square footage and year built are as published on the listing record and not independently verified. Time on market is not a price history. ZIP 62918 takes in rural ground outside Carterville city limits. Listings are represented by various brokerages. Nothing here is an appraisal, a loan offer, or a rate quote. Southern Illinois Realty Experts is an Equal Housing Opportunity brokerage.