BOWEN REAL ESTATE - September 2026

Sales activity tells a somewhat different story. There were 71 detached-home sales in the twelve months ending September 2022. That number fell dramatically to just 37 sales in 2023, a decline of almost 48%. Activity then recovered to 47 sales in 2024 and 57 in 2025 before easing slightly to 55 sales in the latest twelve-month period. Current sales activity is therefore considerably healthier than it was immediately after the peak, but remains about 23% below September 2022 levels.

Dollar volume followed much the same pattern. It fell from $117.1 million in the twelvemonths ending September 2022 to only $55.9 million a year later, before recovering to $75.5 million in 2024 and $92.4 million in 2025. At September 2026, dollar volume was $89.4 million, still almost 24% below the 2022 level.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the picture is the difference between the HPI and actual sale-price statistics. The average sale price has declined only 1.4% since September 2022, from about $1.650 million to $1.626 million, while the median has declined only 0.7%, from $1.435 million to $1.425 million. Those relatively small changes might suggest that prices have been essentially flat, but that would be misleading.

The HPI is designed to measure changes in the value of a consistent benchmark home, whereas average and median prices depend on the particular properties that happen to sell. On Bowen, where a relatively small number of transactions can range from modest homes to multimillion-dollar waterfront properties, changes in the sales mix can materially affect both the average and median. The earlier analysis of the underlying transactions supports this: large parts of the sales distribution have moved down much more substantially than the headline average or median suggests.

What has happened since 2022, then, is best described as a market correction rather than a collapse. The extraordinary market conditions leading into September 2022 were followed by a sharp drop in activity and values in 2023. Since then, transaction volumes have recovered considerably, but benchmark values have not returned to their peak. The latest twelve months also suggest that the market remains price-sensitive: the HPI fell another 4.0% even though the average sale price was essentially unchanged.

It is also worth keeping the correction in perspective. Despite being 12.2% below its 2022 peak, the September 2026 HPI remains approximately 39% above its September 2020 level. In other words, some of the exceptional gains of 2020–2022 have been given back, but Bowen values remain substantially above pre-peak levels.

My reading of the market at September 2026 is that Bowen has moved from the rapid appreciation and unusually high activity of the pandemic-era market into a more balanced, selective environment. Buyers have returned in reasonable numbers, but they are considerably more disciplined about value. Sellers can still achieve strong results, particularly for distinctive or well-positioned properties, but the market no longer provides the broad upward momentum that characterized 2021 and 2022.

The most useful takeaway is that sales activity has recovered much more strongly than benchmark values. Bowen is functioning as a market again, but it is doing so at a lower underlying price level than at the September 2022 peak.