Oct. 5—The third quarter in Santa Fe real estate was much like the second quarter and even the first — except the prime summer selling season ended with a whimper.

Like most of the country, the number of homes selling in Santa Fe has dropped year-over-year since the summer of 2021.

They plummeted 26.7 percent in the third quarter to the lowest July/August/September showing since 2015.

Median home prices for Santa Fe County remained unchanged from the record high of $675,000, a mark set in the second quarter of this year. But third-quarter prices were up 14.6 percent from the same time period in 2021, according to statistics provided by the Santa Fe Association of Realtors.

In the city of Santa Fe, third-quarter median home prices dropped $8,000 since the second quarter — but at $575,000, were 21.2 percent or $100,000 higher than the same time a year ago.

The lowest-priced housing sector in Santa Fe saw median prices inch up $1,000 to $451,000 from the second to third quarter with a year-over-year rise of 11.3 percent. This is the area where a large share of Santa Fe's population lives: midtown, the south side, Agua Fría — everything west of St. Francis Drive between Alameda Street and Interstate 25.

"Median home prices are still strong," said Drew Lamprich, qualifying broker at Sotheby's International Realty Santa Fe. "We did not accelerate as much as other places. We are just seeing a deceleration, not a depreciation."

Housing affordability remained unchanged from the second to third quarter at the lowest point on record in Santa Fe.

The median household earns only 34 percent of what it takes to buy a median priced home.

Mortgage rates have doubled to more than 6 percent since the start of the year.

Santa Fe now has 2.2 month supply of housing on the market, similar to the 2.1 months in the second quarter — though that is higher than the sub-two-month supply for the previous six quarters. Five to six months is considered a balanced market between buyers and sellers.

As much as things have remained mostly flat for six months, there seems to have been a thinning of homebuyers on the market with inflation and high interest rates.

The average number of days a home was on the market in the third quarter was 43 days, a marked increase from 24 days in the second quarter.