Paris and Lamar County Real Estate Market Report, October 2026

Market conditions and rates can change. The information below reflects data available as of the publication date, with each statistic cited to its source and reporting period.

This is the October 2026 edition of the Shannon Miles Group monthly market report for Paris, Texas and Lamar County, written for local homeowners, buyers, sellers, and relocating families who want a clear, honest read on the market they are living in or shopping in. The county-level figures come from Redfin and Zillow, which calculate from MLS and public records, and the notes call out where the sources measure different things. What is new this month: mortgage rates moved sharply higher in the first week of October, and we add Texas-wide context from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M.

The Short Answer: What Is the Paris and Lamar County Housing Market Doing Right Now?

Market Snapshot: Paris and Lamar County

Here is the plain-English snapshot, organized by source so each number keeps its own context. The city of Paris and the broader county can move differently, so we report them separately rather than blending them into one figure. For a broader look at the community beyond the numbers, our Paris, TX real estate overview covers the town in more depth.

What This Means for Paris-Area Sellers

In the city of Paris, median sale prices ran about 9.8% higher than a year earlier on Redfin's three-month measure, and 65 homes sold in May 2026. At the same time, homes took longer to sell, about 85 days on average versus 53 days a year before, and Redfin describes the market as not very competitive with a 23 out of 100 score. The city's median price per square foot also fell year over year, which is a reminder that the mix of homes that sold can move these averages around.

The new factor this month is the rate move. A 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 7.28% for the week ending October 1, up from 6.76% in mid-September, and higher rates mean tighter buyer budgets. In practical terms, a home that needs financing now faces a smaller pool of qualified buyers than it did a month ago, so pricing and condition matter more, not less. That is our reading of the data, not a prediction.

The practical read for sellers: pricing discipline and presentation are the levers that still work. A home priced against its own recent comparable sales can find the right buyer, but a listing that starts too high can lose the best weeks of buyer attention, and with days on market already stretched, a long sit is expensive. Averages do not price any individual home, so we encourage a property-specific pricing conversation using comparable sales for your exact neighborhood, condition, and features. Our Paris seller guide walks through the whole process, the Seller Center organizes the resources by property type, and if you are wondering how an asking price gets set, how to price a home to sell explains the thinking behind it. If you want to know what you would actually walk away with, start with an estimated seller net discussion.

What This Means for Paris-Area Buyers

For buyers, the headline is that there is less bidding pressure than a year ago and typically more time to evaluate a home before it sells. The not very competitive 23 out of 100 score and the longer days-on-market figure both point the same direction: in the city of Paris you generally do not have to rush a decision the way buyers did when the market was tighter. Zillow's county estimate of about 61 days to pending tells a similar story for Lamar County as a whole.

The other side of the ledger is the rate. The same loan amount costs more per month at 7.28% than it did at 6.76% in mid-September, so buying power, not competition, is the real constraint this month. That makes pre-approval and a clear budget more important than ever, and it means the homes most likely to sell are the ones priced where a qualified buyer's payment still works.

This is rural Northeast Texas, and every property is genuinely different. Condition, systems, and utilities deserve real attention before you commit, and the good news is that you usually have time to give them that attention. If you would like someone to help you read a specific property or neighborhood, our residential buying services exist for exactly that, our guide to what it is like to live in Paris, Texas gives you a feel for the town beyond the sales data, and how long it takes to buy a home sets expectations for the process.

The Rural and Acreage Difference

An important note for anyone looking at land: the residential statistics above do not apply to land, farm-and-ranch, or homes-on-acreage markets. A county median sale price built mostly from homes in town says very little about what a specific tract of land is worth.

The city and county medians moved in opposite directions this year, up about 9.8% in Paris proper and down about 10.5% across Lamar County, and part of that gap is simply the rural mix. Rural and land pricing is property-specific, driven by access, utilities, water, terrain, improvements, and intended use. Two tracts across the road from each other can price completely differently for those reasons. That is why we invite a conversation for land and acreage questions rather than quoting a county median. Our land and rural real estate and acreage pages cover the property types we work with across Lamar County and Northeast Texas, and if you are a landowner thinking about selling, selling a home on acreage explains how the house and the land get evaluated together. For buyers weighing a home in town against acreage, should you buy in town or move to acreage lays out the trade-offs honestly, and how much acreage adds to a home's value answers the question buyers ask most often.

Northeast Texas Land & Acreage Market Pulse: October 2026

This is the first edition of the monthly Northeast Texas Land & Acreage Market Pulse, a companion to the residential report above. It focuses on land, acreage homes, farms, ranches, and rural property across the eight counties the Shannon Miles Group serves: Lamar, Fannin, Red River, Delta, Hopkins, Hunt, Grayson, and Collin. Every figure below is cited to its source and reporting period, and the geography and date of each statistic are labeled. Verified sales data comes from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M (TRERC); county inventory figures come from active-listing market data and are asking prices, not closed sales. Where a reliable county median price per acre is not published, we say so rather than invent one.

Verified Sales Data: TRERC Rural Land Markets

The most authoritative regional numbers come from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M, whose quarterly rural land report covers verified sales of farmland and ranchland. The second quarter 2026 report was published August 20, 2026. TRERC reports rural land as one combined market of farmland and ranchland tracts, so it does not split the figures into separate farmland versus ranchland prices.

The regional picture is a slowdown after a strong run. In the third quarter of 2025, TRERC's Northeast Texas region reported $9,313 per acre, up 4.38% year over year, with sales volume down 18.33% to 802 transactions, the lowest since 2013. The Q2 2026 reading of $8,604 extends that cooling trend, while the statewide average has plateaued rather than fallen. None of this prices any individual tract, which is why we pair the verified data with a property-specific conversation for every land question.

County by County: What the Active Listings Show

The table below is asking-price inventory data from Land.com market insights and LandSearch, captured for this report in October 2026. These are active listings, not closed sales, and they are not the same quantity as the TRERC verified sales figures above. Median asking price per acre is shown only where the source publishes one; for Lamar County no reliable county median price per acre is published, so we do not quote one.

What Is Changing on the Ground

Beyond the listing data, several public projects are reshaping parts of the eight-county footprint, and each one touches rural property owners in a different way:

• Sherman and Grayson County: Texas Instruments began production at its first Sherman semiconductor fab on December 17, 2025, the anchor of a roughly $30 to $40 billion megasite, with additional capacity under construction. Residential build-out is following, including new master-planned communities such as Heritage Ranch, Cottonwood, Frontera, and Joiner Ranch, and Grayson County carried about 7.2 months of housing supply as of August 2026. That demand pressure is part of why transitional land along US 75 commands a premium over farm and ranch land farther out.
• Celina and Collin County: Serenade Texas, a 468-acre master-planned community with roughly 1,005 homesites, broke ground on March 26, 2026, and Ramble, about 1,380 acres with more than 4,000 planned homes, is opening through 2026. Legacy Hills, a roughly 3,200-acre master-planned community, is also in the pipeline. Rural tracts in the county's northern tier sit close to this growth.
• Roads: TxDOT's Paris District is widening US 75 in Sherman and Denison from four lanes to six, and a proposed US 82 widening would take the highway from two lanes to a divided four-lane from the Fannin County line to Loop 286 west of Paris. In town, a raised median and turn lanes are going in on US 82/Lamar Avenue from 33rd to 42nd Streets. The SH 121 overpass at US 69 in Fannin County opened to all traffic on June 23, 2025, and work continues on SH 289 at FM 902 near Dorchester.
• Water: Bois d'Arc Lake in Fannin County, Texas' first major new reservoir in about 30 years, was about 90% full as of October 2026. Phase II expansion of the Leonard Water Treatment Plant toward 140 million gallons per day is targeted for completion in late 2027. In May 2025 the Texas Water Development Board approved $12.795 million for the Red River County Water Supply Corporation and $3.14 million for the Ravenna-Nunnelee Water Supply Corporation in Fannin County, both for water system improvements.

For Rural Landowners: USDA Programs and Deadlines

For owners of farm, ranch, and grassland in these counties, two federal items are worth knowing this month:

• EQIP applications: the Natural Resources Conservation Service accepts Environmental Quality Incentives Program applications year-round with ranked batching, and the current deadline for FY 2027 funding is November 13, 2026. Common cost-shared practices in this region include brush management, prescribed grazing, pasture work, and wildlife habitat improvements, ranked at the local county office.
• Program reauthorization: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, reauthorized EQIP, the Conservation Stewardship Program, and the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program through fiscal year 2031. Conservation Reserve Program authority is extended through September 30, 2026, and new CRP enrollment is currently paused pending farm bill reauthorization.

What Rural Property Buyers and Sellers Should Know

For buyers, the verified regional data shows per-acre prices softening after several years of strong appreciation, and asking-price inventory is deep in most of the eight counties, which supports patient, due-diligence-heavy buying. Water, septic, utilities, access, terrain, and any agricultural exemptions matter far more than a county average, and the land and acreage answer book collects the questions buyers ask us most often. Our land and rural property hub, the acreage page, and the land and ranch services page lay out how we work across the region, and the county guides linked in the table above cover each market in depth.

For sellers, the region's total dollar volume fell about 11% year over year in Q2 2026 even as per-acre prices held near their recent range, which is a signal that pricing against comparable closed sales in your own county matters more than a regional average. A well-priced, well-presented tract is what moves in this market. If you own a home on acreage, selling a home on acreage explains how the house and land are evaluated together, and selling ranch and land covers the larger-tract side. The land for sale in Lamar County page and the Lamar County land and rural property guide are the natural starting points for our home county, and country homes and equestrian properties cover the lifestyle segments buyers search for most.

One standing note: the Shannon Miles Group serves all buyers and sellers equally, and every statistic in this pulse is reported with its geography and date so you can check the source yourself. We would rather tell you a number is not reliably published than hand you one that will not hold up.

Local Context: Paris, Lamar County, and the Fall Market

The data only makes sense against the place. In-town Paris is a market of older homes, historic neighborhoods, and established streets, where character and condition do much of the talking. Buyers there are often relocating from the DFW metroplex or coming home to family, and they care about walkability, schools, and the pace of small-town life. Our Lamar County overview and the guide to buying a historic home cover what those buyers should weigh.

Outside Paris, the county is a different market entirely: homes on acreage, farms, ranches, and land tracts where the buyer is usually after space, water, utilities, and room to work. Those buyers move on a different clock and different criteria, and they are typically less sensitive to the mortgage-rate headlines than in-town buyers, because a meaningful share of acreage purchases involve equity, cash, or land-sale proceeds. That distinction is part of why the city and county figures diverge.

Seasonally, listing activity and buyer traffic typically ease after summer, and the October rate move may reinforce that pattern. None of this is a prediction; it is context for reading the numbers above.

What We Are Seeing Locally

From our conversations with Northeast Texas buyers and sellers this month, a few themes keep coming up. These are observations from local conversations, not statistics, and they are not a prediction about any specific property:

• Buyers are asking how the October rate move changes what they can afford, and whether waiting another season would put them in a better position.
• Sellers are asking how the longer days-on-market figures translate to their specific home, and what pricing strategy avoids a long sit.
• Acreage buyers are spending real time on water, septic, and utility due diligence before they make an offer, which is exactly the right instinct in this market.
• Sellers of homes on acreage are asking how to position the house and the land together, since the two can attract different buyers.

If you would like a property-specific read on any of these questions, we are glad to walk through it with you. Our what is my home worth page is the natural starting point for a pricing conversation, and there is no obligation attached to it.

Three Things That May Surprise You

A few observations from the data that a local homeowner may not expect:

• The city median price rose while the city median price per square foot fell. Paris median sale prices were up about 9.8% year over year while median price per square foot fell about 19.1%. Both figures are from Redfin for the same window, and they can move in opposite directions because the mix of homes that sold changed. Averages hide a lot of what is actually happening.
• The city and the county moved in opposite directions. Paris proper was up about 9.8% year over year while Lamar County as a whole was down about 10.5%. One number cannot describe both markets, and anyone quoting a single Paris or Lamar County price is probably blending two different markets.
• Three price figures, three meanings. Redfin's city median sale price is about $178,000, Redfin's county median sale price is about $204,000, and Zillow's county average home value estimate is about $206,990. They are different quantities from different sources, and comparing them directly will mislead you.

Questions Buyers and Sellers Are Asking This Month

Is Paris currently a buyer's or seller's market?

Redfin scores the Paris market at 23 out of 100 on competitiveness and describes it as not very competitive, with homes taking about 85 days to sell. That leans toward buyers having more time and more options than they did a year ago. It is Redfin's measure, not a guarantee about any single home.

Are home prices rising or falling?

It depends on which geography you mean. Paris city median sale prices were up about 9.8% year over year, while the Lamar County median was down about 10.5% on the latest published figures. The two markets are genuinely different, which is why this report keeps them separate.

How long are homes taking to sell?

About 85 days in the city of Paris on Redfin's latest measure, versus 53 days a year earlier. Zillow's county estimate is about 61 days to pending. Both point to a slower, more patient market than 2025.

Is inventory increasing?

Inventory counts are not reliably published by our standard sources for this reporting period, so we flag that gap rather than guess. The longer days-on-market figures suggest less urgency, but we will not invent an inventory number.

Are homes on acreage behaving differently?

Yes. The gap between the city and county medians reflects a county mix that includes rural homes and acreage, and acreage pricing is property-specific rather than driven by a county median. Buyers of acreage are also typically less rate-sensitive than in-town buyers.

Should I sell now or wait?

Rates are up and days on market are longer, so the market rewards pricing discipline and a property that shows well. Timing matters less than price and condition right now. A property-specific conversation, including an estimated seller net discussion, is the honest way to answer this for your home.

Is this a good time to buy in Paris?

There is less competition and more time to evaluate a home than a year ago, which is genuinely helpful for buyers. The offset is the rate: 7.28% on a 30-year fixed makes monthly payments higher, so the practical question is what your payment looks like at today's rate, not whether prices are falling.

How much negotiating room do buyers have?

Sale-to-list ratios are not reliably published for this period, so we do not quote one. The longer days-on-market figures suggest sellers are more willing to negotiate than a year ago, but that is an observation from the data, not a statistic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do the numbers in this report come from?

The county-level figures come from Redfin and Zillow market data, which calculate from MLS and public records, covering the most recent published window, the three months ending May 2026. The mortgage rate comes from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ending October 1, 2026. The statewide context comes from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M. Each figure carries its own geography and reporting period, and this report does not blend them into a single number.

Why are the Paris city and Lamar County figures so different?

They cover different geographies and different mixes of property. The city figure covers Paris proper, while the county figure includes rural homes and acreage that trade at different price points. In the latest published data, the city median rose about 9.8% year over year while the county median fell about 10.5%, so the two are reported separately rather than blended.

How do mortgage rates change the picture this month?

The 30-year fixed-rate average rose from 6.76% on September 10, 2026 to 7.28% for the week ending October 1, 2026, according to Freddie Mac. Higher rates mean higher monthly payments for the same loan amount, which typically cools buyer urgency and reinforces the slower pace the market data already shows.

Is now a good time to sell a home on acreage?

Acreage pricing is property-specific and driven by access, utilities, water, terrain, and improvements rather than by a county median. The city and county figures moved in opposite directions this year, which is a reminder that your property's segment matters more than the headline. A property-specific pricing conversation is the honest way to answer this for your land, and our guide to selling a home on acreage explains how the house and land get evaluated together.

Sources for This Report

The county-level residential figures above are drawn from Redfin and Zillow market data, which calculate from MLS and public records. The links below are the primary sources for the mortgage-rate, statewide, and land and acreage figures in this report:

• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed-rate average, week ending October 1, 2026.
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED, MORTGAGE30US, 30-year fixed-rate mortgage average, confirming the October 1, 2026 reading.
• Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M, housing data and Housing Reports by MSA, 2026.
• TRERC, Texas Rural Land Markets, Second Quarter 2026, published August 20, 2026, including Region 4 (Northeast Texas) and statewide rural land figures.
• TRERC, Texas Rural Land Markets, First Quarter 2026, Region 4 context for the prior quarter.
• Land.com market insights, Red River County, active-listing data captured October 2026.
• Land.com market insights, Hopkins County, active-listing data captured October 2026.
• Land.com market insights, Hunt County, active-listing data captured October 2026.
• Land.com market insights, Delta County, active-listing data captured October 2026.
• LandSearch, Fannin County listings, and Acres.com Fannin County sold records, accessed October 2026.
• Texas Land Agent, North Texas Land Prices 2026, closed-transaction analysis for Collin and Grayson counties.
• Ranchman Properties, North Texas Land Mid-Year Market Report 2026, Grayson County price tiers.
• TxDOT, US 82 Lamar County widening project, and the US 75 Project in Sherman and Denison, project status as of October 2026.
• North Texas Municipal Water District, Bois d'Arc Lake, reservoir status and Phase II expansion, October 2026.
• Texas Water Development Board, May 8, 2025 financial assistance approvals, Red River County Water Supply Corporation and Ravenna-Nunnelee Water Supply Corporation.
• USDA NRCS, Environmental Quality Incentives Program in Texas, application batching deadline November 13, 2026.