Folsom’s spring selling season drew a notably larger crowd of buyers than last year. Newly released Redfin data for the three months ending May 2026 shows 246 homes changed hands in the city of roughly 96,000 residents, up 18.8% from 207 sales during the same stretch in 2025. The pickup came even as the median sale price slipped, suggesting that softer pricing — combined with easier borrowing costs — pulled more buyers off the sidelines this spring.

Sales accelerate as prices ease

The median Folsom home sold for $742,556 in the three months ending May, down 4.9% from $780,500 a year earlier and 2.3% below the $760,000 median recorded in the three months ending April. The median list price followed a similar path, settling at $758,503.

Yet the price-per-square-foot tells a slightly different story: at $379, it edged up 0.5% from $377 a year ago. The divergence implies buyers gravitated toward somewhat smaller homes this spring, pulling the headline median down without indicating that values on a like-for-like basis have meaningfully retreated.

Stepping back further, Folsom’s current median remains modestly below the $780,500 mark of May 2025 but still sits above the $755,000 level recorded two years ago. Over the past five years, prices have risen roughly 10% from a median of $674,000 in spring 2021, a more measured pace than the run-up many California markets experienced earlier in the pandemic era.

What the rate drop means for buyers

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.44% in May, down from 6.82% a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac data published by the Federal Reserve. Combined with Folsom’s lower median price, a buyer putting 20% down on a typical home now faces a monthly principal-and-interest payment of about $3,731 — roughly $348 less per month than the $4,079 that same purchase would have required a year ago. That improvement helps explain why sales volume rebounded so noticeably even as broader affordability remains stretched.

At current prices, a Folsom home costs about 5.3 times the city’s median household income of $139,804, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The monthly payment on a median-priced home consumes roughly 32% of median household income — within reach by traditional lending standards, but well above what economists typically consider comfortably affordable.

Inventory loosens, but it’s still a sellers’ market

Active listings totaled 444 at the end of the period, up 5.2% from 422 a year earlier and 8.8% above April’s level. New listings ticked up only modestly, with 335 homes coming to market versus 331 last spring.

Even with more choices on offer, the math still favors sellers. Folsom carried just 1.8 months of supply — meaning at the current sales pace, every listing would be absorbed in under two months. Anything under three months is generally considered a tight sellers’ market.

The pace of sales reinforces that picture. The typical Folsom home went under contract in 13 days, one day longer than the 12-day median a year ago but a day faster than April’s 14-day reading. More than a third of homes — 37.1% — sold above their asking price, up from 31.4% in the same period last year. The sale-to-list ratio came in at 99.8%, meaning the typical home traded for essentially its asking price.

National backdrop

Nationally, the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index was slightly lower in March than a year earlier, pointing to a flat-to-modestly-softer national price picture. Against that backdrop, Folsom’s roughly 5% year-over-year median decline looks more pronounced — though the steady price-per-square-foot figure suggests the headline drop reflects shifting buyer preferences as much as any broad cooling in values.

Population in Folsom grew an estimated 2.1% over the past year to about 95,680, according to the California Department of Finance, adding to underlying demand even as more listings have come online.