• Virginia Countryside: 81 → 70 contracts, -13.6%, with both price bands softening (under-$750K -13.8%, over-$750K -12.5%).
• West Virginia Panhandle: 69 → 71 contracts, +2.9%, driven by the under-$750K segment (+1.4%) plus one additional contract above $750K (0 to 1, too small a sample to read into).
• Combined contract activity across both markets: 150 → 141, -6.0% for the week.
• Virginia Countryside's average days on market spiked from 50.3 to 86.4 days (+71.8%), by far the largest single-week marketing-time swing logged in either market this fall.
• West Virginia Panhandle's average days on market fell sharply, 65.6 → 44.6 days (-32.0%), even as contract volume ticked up, the exact inverse of Virginia Countryside's pattern this week.
• Year-to-date, Virginia Countryside remains positive at +0.9% (3,837 → 3,870), while West Virginia Panhandle is down 3.5% (3,884 → 3,747), both readings far steadier than this week's swings suggest.
• West Virginia Panhandle's year-to-date over-$750K segment is up 63.2% (68 → 111 contracts), still a small absolute number, but the fastest-growing segment in either market for a second straight review.

• This week is essentially a mirror image of last week: seven days ago Virginia Countryside was up 4.4% with West Virginia down 33.3%; this week Virginia Countryside is down 13.6% with West Virginia up 2.9%. That kind of week-to-week role reversal in two small, adjoining markets is exactly the signal-vs-noise lesson this report keeps returning to; the weekly print tells you almost nothing in isolation, and the year-to-date column is where the real read lives.
• The year-to-date numbers, read side by side with last week's, barely moved. Virginia Countryside eased slightly from +1.2% to +0.9%, West Virginia held essentially flat at -3.5% (from -3.6%). Two wildly different weekly headlines produced almost no change in the underlying year-long trend, which is the clearest possible demonstration of why these markets need to be judged on cumulative, not weekly, performance.
• Virginia Countryside's 71.8% days-on-market spike is the standout number of the week in either report, metro or countryside. A jump from 50 to 86 days in a single week, on a market this size, most likely reflects a handful of longer-marketed properties finally going under contract together in this particular week, rather than a sudden, genuine shift in buyer urgency, but it's worth tracking whether that elevated DOM baseline holds into next week's data before writing it off entirely as a one-week artifact.
• West Virginia Panhandle's inverse move — days on market dropping 32.0% while volume rose — is a healthier combination than it might first appear: homes that went under contract did so faster, not slower, even as more of them closed. That's consistent with available, well-priced inventory moving efficiently, a markedly different story from the cooling pattern playing out across the six core Metro DC jurisdictions this same week, where every market logged its fourth straight week of decline.
• The over-$750K segment in West Virginia continues to be the one genuinely durable trend in this report: up 63.2% year-to-date for a second consecutive review, even as the overall Panhandle number swings around week to week. That's consistent with DC-area buyers migrating further out for land, acreage, and larger homes at a meaningfully lower price-per-square-foot than Northern Virginia or Loudoun, a structural pull factor, not a one-week fluke.
• Taken together, these countryside markets continue to move almost entirely independently of the Metro DC slowdown. While the six core jurisdictions just posted a fourth straight week of across-the-board declines and a region-wide days-on-market figure that cracked 50 days for the first time this fall, these two smaller markets are simply trading leadership week to week around a basically flat-to-slightly-positive (Virginia) and modestly negative (West Virginia) year-long baseline, neither accelerating nor decelerating in a way that tracks the metro pattern.
• The practical takeaway for agents working this corridor: don't let either market's weekly headline drive the client conversation. A Virginia Countryside seller hearing "days on market up 72%" should hear the year-to-date number (+0.9%, essentially flat) in the same breath; a West Virginia Panhandle buyer hearing "contracts up this week" should understand that's coming off a modestly negative year-to-date baseline, not a suddenly hot market.

• Virginia Countryside: 81 → 70 (-13.6%); YTD 3,837 → 3,870 (+0.9%)
• West Virginia Panhandle: 69 → 71 (+2.9%); YTD 3,884 → 3,747 (-3.5%)
• Combined weekly: 150 → 141 (-6.0%)
• Virginia Countryside average days on market: 50.3 → 86.4 days (+71.8%)
• West Virginia Panhandle average days on market: 65.6 → 44.6 days (-32.0%)
• West Virginia Panhandle year-to-date over-$750K: 68 → 111 contracts (+63.2%)

Same two small markets, same week — proof once again that in the countryside, this week's headline and this year's trend rarely tell the same story.