The Charlotte Balance Score now says which way its sale-to-list proxy leans

The Market Balance Score on the Charlotte housing market study takes five inputs, and one of them has always been a substitute. Canopy MLS does not publish a sale-to-list ratio for the Charlotte Region, so the score uses Canopy’s “percent of original list price received” in its place. The page said that was a proxy. It did not say what the difference actually is, or which way it pushes the result.

It does now. Percent of original list is measured from the first price a seller asked, so it absorbs every reduction made along the way. A sale-to-list ratio compares the sale price to the current list price after those reductions, which is a different and higher number. For this market a true sale-to-list figure would sit in the high nineties, against the 96.3 percent the score actually uses. Because the substituted figure is lower, that input pushes the Charlotte score toward the buyer-favorable end.

The value did not change and neither did the score, which remains 53.1 and in the balanced band. This is a disclosure change, not a data change. We think a reader deciding how much weight to give a score deserves to know not just that an input is approximate, but which direction the approximation leans, and a caveat that says “proxy” without saying “and it reads low” is only half a caveat.

The same edition moved the mortgage rate to the Freddie Mac average for the week of July 23, 2026, which lifts the worked example’s monthly payment. No Charlotte market figure moved, because the June Canopy report had not yet published when this edition went out.