Woodland’s median sale price fell to $553,414 in the three months ending May, down 2.5% from a year earlier, according to newly released Redfin data. But unlike many markets where a falling median masks rising per-square-foot prices, Woodland’s per-square-foot figure moved in the same direction, slipping 2.0% to $327 from $333 a year ago. The close alignment suggests this isn’t a mix-shift toward smaller homes pulling the headline number down — buyers are simply paying a bit less per foot than they were last spring.

Prices soften, but buyers are competing harder

Even with the price dip, the market tilted more in sellers’ favor on one key measure: 34.2% of Woodland homes sold above their list price in the spring window, up from 28.0% a year earlier. The sale-to-list ratio held just under asking at 99.7%, meaning the typical home went for nearly exactly what sellers wanted. Homes also moved at the same brisk pace as last year, with a median of 16 days on market — unchanged year-over-year, though up from 13 days in the prior three-month window, a small slowdown that is fairly typical as the spring listing pool deepens.

Sales activity is the stronger story. Woodland recorded 123 home sales in the period, up 14.9% from 107 a year ago, and up 9.8% from the prior three-month window. New listings rose to 169 from 155 a year earlier, and active inventory grew 6.8% to 221 homes. That works out to roughly 1.8 months of supply, which is well within sellers’-market territory and helps explain why a growing share of sales are clearing above asking even as the headline price has eased.

Affordability and the rate backdrop

Lower prices and lower mortgage rates have combined to ease monthly costs modestly. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.44% in May, according to Freddie Mac, down from 6.82% a year earlier (though up from 6.33% in April). On a median-priced Woodland home with 20% down, that works out to a principal-and-interest payment of about $2,781 a month — roughly $185 less than the same purchase would have cost a year ago.

Affordability still remains stretched. At the current median price, a Woodland home costs about 6.1 times the city’s median household income of $90,180, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey — above the 5x threshold generally considered unaffordable. The monthly payment on a median-priced home eats up about 37% of median household monthly income, which the National Association of Realtors considers stretched but not unaffordable.

Nationally, the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index was essentially flat year-over-year through March, edging slightly lower — a softer national backdrop than Woodland’s recent sales momentum suggests locally.

The longer view

Zooming out, Woodland’s spring median is nearly identical to where it stood two years ago, when the three months ending May 2024 produced a $550,000 median on 122 sales. Compared with five years ago, when the median was $481,000 in the early-pandemic spring of 2021, prices are up about 15.1%. That’s a more modest five-year gain than many California markets posted over the same stretch, and homes today are sitting roughly nine days longer than the seven-day median that defined that frenzied 2021 market.

Woodland’s population of about 61,300 has edged down 0.6% over the past year, according to the California Department of Finance — a small contraction that takes some of the demand pressure off an otherwise tight market.

What the numbers add up to

The picture from the spring data is of a market that has cooled modestly on price but remains firmly in sellers’ territory on the ground. Homes are still selling in about two weeks, more than a third are going for above asking, and supply remains thin at under two months. For buyers, the combination of slightly lower prices, somewhat lower mortgage rates, and a wider pool of new listings has produced the most active spring sales pace Woodland has seen in two years — even as competition for the best-priced homes has intensified.