Is It Taking Forever to Sell a House Around Des Moines Right Now?

If you've been sitting on the idea of selling, I'd bet the thing keeping you up at night isn't the price you'd get. It's the wait. You've heard the stories about houses lingering, price cuts, the whole thing dragging on for months. You are not alone in worrying about that, and I don't think you're wrong to wonder.

Here's what the data actually says.

Across the metro, over the twelve weeks ending September 20, 2026, the median time on market for sold homes was 69 days. That's from a sample of 1,799 sold homes, so it's not a fluke or a handful of oddball listings. And when those homes did sell, they closed at a median of about 99.3% of the asking price. Generally speaking, sellers here aren't giving much away to get a deal done.

That's the metro as a whole, but it's worth being honest that "the metro" isn't one market. In Urbandale, the typical home takes about 71 and a half days to go under contract. In Des Moines, in the ZIP that covers the near-northwest side, that same measure runs closer to 34 days. Same twelve weeks, same broad area, two very different experiences depending on where you're standing.

There's a wrinkle worth naming, and it's the kind of thing I like to point out rather than bury. In one Des Moines ZIP, the median sale price rose about 6% compared with a year earlier, while the average sale-to-list ratio slipped about 0.6 percentage points over that same stretch. In plain terms: homes there are selling for more money, but sellers are conceding a little more to get there than they used to. Price and leverage don't always move the same direction, and this is a good example of it.

What does that look like on a Saturday? In the faster-moving pockets, you might get a handful of showings and an offer within the first couple of weeks. In the slower ones, you're looking at closer to two or three months of living with a sign in the yard, maybe adjusting the listing along the way. Neither is a crisis. It's just a different pace.

For sellers, this generally leans in your favor. A 99.3% sale-to-list ratio, metro-wide, tells you buyers aren't showing up looking to lowball. For buyers, it means you likely have more room to be patient and thoughtful than the "everything sells overnight" version of this market that gets talked about at cookouts.

What would change my mind on any of this? I'd want to watch whether that sale-to-list number holds steady over the next stretch, and whether the gap between the fastest and slowest ZIPs narrows or widens. That's the kind of thing that tells you whether a market is settling into a pattern or still finding its footing.

I could go through all the pros and cons of your specific situation, but the honest first step is knowing what your place would actually list for today, given all this. No pressure, no timeline attached. If you'd like me to put together a straightforward home value estimate for your property, just let me know. You are not bothering me by asking.