A client texted me last week, a little panicked.

She had seen a headline. It said Potomac home prices dropped 24 percent.

She wanted to know one thing: did she just miss her window to sell?

I get the worry. Because on one level, that number is completely real.

The average sale price in Potomac (zip code 20854) went from about $1.78 million a year ago to roughly $1.35 million last month.

Stop reading there, and it sounds like a crash.

But it isn't one. Not even close.

So let me show you what actually happened. Who it's helping. Who it's slowing down. And why that scary "average" is fooling a lot of smart people right now.

The boom is real

Start with the simplest number there is.

How many homes actually sold?

Last May: 42. This May: 91.

That's more than double. In a single year.

And these were not desperate, marked-down sales.

More than half of those homes sold for over asking price (55% of them to be exact). A year ago, it was about a third.

The typical home went under contract in SIX days.

Think about that. Six days, with bidding wars on more than half of them.

So what initial looks like a falling market starts to look like a hungry one.

But if values aren't collapsing, why did the average drop so much?

This is where people get misled.

The market split in two

Potomac didn't get cheaper.

Potomac split in two.

At the top, things froze.

Last month, not a single home over $4 million sold. The year before, there were three.

Even the $3 million range had just one sale. A place in Avenel.

The luxury listings that are out there? They're sitting. Some for months. Some of those may have lost value. Some of them might still sell for what they want (once global markets stabilize a bit).

A year ago, only one home had been on the market longer than 90 days. This May, four were.

Now look at the middle. The middle caught fire.

Homes between $1 million and $2 million had 60 sales last month.

Read that again. That one price range, by itself, sold more homes than the entire Potomac market did last May.

So here's why the average fell.

The $4 million sales vanished. A wave of $1 to $2 million homes flooded in.

When the expensive sales disappear and the mid-range ones pile up, the average gets dragged down.

But the homes themselves didn't lose value. The mix of what sold changed. That's it.

That is what people mean by a "bifurcated market."

And it's why two things can be true at once: the average dropped 24 percent, and your home is still worth what it was (or more).

Why so many people finally sold

Quick question. Why did sales suddenly double?

A big part of the answer is interest rates. Just not the way you'd think.

Earlier this year, rates came down significantly compared to where they'd been. They even briefly dippsed just under 6% for the first time in years.

For a long time, this market was frozen. People had locked in super low rates and didn't want to trade them for a higher mortgage. So they stayed put.

When rates eased, that grip loosened. A lot of those owners finally felt free to move.

Then there's the other group. Empty nesters. Retirees. People who have owned their Potomac homes for decades.

The kids are gone. The house is bigger than they need. The equity is huge.

So they listed.

Unlocked movers plus longtime owners cashing out. That's a big reason 91 homes sold instead of 42.

Why the wealthy buyers went quiet

The frozen top has its own logic. And it's nothing like the rest of us.

When most people buy a home, they think about the rate and the monthly payment.

For an ultra-wealthy buyer, that barely matters.

A lot of these purchases are all cash. Or they're borrowed against an investment portfolio, not a mortgage.

So these buyers don't watch rates. They watch the markets.

And right now, the markets feel shaky. The conflict with Iran added another layer of worry.

When that happens, a wealthy buyer's instinct is not to write a multimillion-dollar check.

It's to wait.

So many of them simply chose not to move.

The frozen top isn't about the homes getting worse. It's about the buyers getting cautious, all at once.

One honest warning

I won't pretend everything is perfect.

As the Iran situation escalated, rates ticked back up. And activity did cool a little as we moved through May.

That's ongoing and definitely worth watching.

But here's a little more context. Even with that slowdown, even with rates moving against us, there was still far more activity than a year ago.

So when you see a scary headline, the honest read isn't "the market fell apart."

It's "the market cooled from a roaring pace, and it's still way ahead of last year."

The tiers people are ignoring

One last thing. Most people have no idea about this.

When you hear "Potomac," you picture mansions. River Road. Avenel. And yes, that world exists.

But you can also get into the Churchill school district for under $700,000.

Last month, townhomes in Inverness Forest closed at $606,000 (*this one was a total gut renovation fixer upper) and $672,000.

There's new construction too. Eighteen of last month's sales were new condos at The Flats at Northside, running from about $628,000 up to $1.5 million.

And even if you throw out every one of those new builds, the resale market still sold 73 homes.

That's about 74 percent more than all of last May.

However you slice it, the core of this market is strong.

What this means for you

So here's what I told that client. And it's the takeaway for you too.

Don't react to the headline. React to your half of the market.

Own a mid-range Potomac home? You're sitting in one of the most competitive segments in the region. Homes move fast. Often over asking.

Own at the very top? Patience and sharp pricing matter more right now. That tier has genuinely cooled.

A buyer who assumed Potomac was out of reach? There's a value tier here worth a serious look.

That "average" in the headline is one of the least useful numbers for your home.

What matters is your neighborhood. Your price point. And which half of this split market you're actually in.

Want to know? I'm happy to talk it through.

My job isn't to sell you on anything. It's to show you the data, so you can decide for yourself.