August 2026 - OC Market Update

The Big Story

• Median home sale prices pulled back from June's twelve-month high, but at $434,100 they remain nearly 2% above where they stood a year ago.
• Inventory declined in July, slipping below year-ago levels for the first time in months, and new listings fell sharply from June.
• Existing home sales eased from June's pace but held slightly above last July, keeping demand roughly flat year over year.

The spring rally takes a breather, but prices are still ahead of last year

After five straight months of gains carried the median sale price to $442,800 in June, July brought the first pullback of the year. The median home sold for $434,100, a 1.96% decline from June, though still 1.97% higher than the $425,700 we saw in July of last year. A modest summer dip is not unusual, and the bigger picture is that prices have climbed roughly 9.9% since January's $395,000 trough. On the financing side, the 30-year mortgage rate eased slightly to 6.43% in July before jumping to 6.69% in August, its highest level since last summer and a meaningful move away from the 6% low we saw back in March. That combination of a slightly lower price and a slightly lower rate trimmed the median monthly P&I payment to $2,254 in July, down from $2,286 in June. The catch is that this figure is now essentially identical to the $2,253 buyers were paying a year ago, meaning the affordability advantage that lower rates delivered earlier in the year has been completely erased. With August rates moving higher, payments look likely to head back up.

Inventory turns lower, and new listings drop off fast

Sales cool off from June, but demand is holding its ground

Existing home sales registered 4,060,000 in July, down 1.69% from June's 4,130,000 and roughly 3% below May's 4,190,000 high for the year. On a year-over-year basis, however, sales are up 0.74% from last July's 4,030,000, which means demand is essentially holding steady rather than deteriorating. That is a reasonable outcome given what buyers are facing. Monthly payments are back to where they were a year ago, and the run of price appreciation from January through June asked buyers to stretch further with every passing month. What is encouraging is that sales have stayed in a fairly narrow band between 4,010,000 and 4,190,000 all year, showing a market that has found a floor even as financing costs have moved around. Also worth watching in the background: the Federal Reserve's mortgage-backed securities holdings continue to shrink, falling to $1.93 trillion in August from nearly $2.07 trillion last November, which removes a source of support for mortgage rates over time.

Tighter supply is helping sellers, but the national market still favors buyers

Prices hold near record territory as the market cools its pace

After May's push to $1,492,500, the highest median sale price in our data set, Orange County essentially held its ground in June with a median single-family sale price of $1,490,000. That is a negligible 0.17% dip on a month-over-month basis and a 1.36% increase compared to June 2025, when the median was $1,470,000. This is now the fourth consecutive month of year-over-year appreciation, though the pace of that growth has clearly moderated after May's standout 5.14% reading. For context, we went from 1.21% growth in March to 3.71% in April, then 5.14% in May, and now back to 1.36% in June. That deceleration is worth watching, but it is worth remembering the comparison point: June 2025 was itself a local peak, which makes this year's June figure a tougher hurdle to clear. Stepping back, the median price has climbed steadily from $1,390,000 in December to nearly $1.5 million by midsummer, and prices are holding at the top of their historical range rather than giving anything back.

Inventory keeps building, but still trails last summer

Inventory data runs one month ahead of our other metrics, and July's figures show 4,823 active single-family listings in Orange County. That represents a 6.14% increase from June's 4,544 listings, which is exactly what we would expect as the summer selling season reaches its peak, and it puts inventory at its highest level since August of last year. The more meaningful comparison, though, is the year-over-year one: July 2026 inventory is 2.60% below July 2025, when there were 4,952 listings available. That makes three consecutive months of below-year-ago inventory, following May's 2.60% decline and June's 3.71% decline. The pattern here is fairly clear. Supply is following its normal seasonal build, but the elevated year-over-year inventory levels that defined much of 2025 are no longer part of the picture. Buyers have more to choose from than they did in the winter, when inventory bottomed out at 2,860 listings in January, but not as much as they had at this point last summer.

Listings are moving a touch faster than they did last summer

The median single-family listing in Orange County spent 25 days on the market in June, up from 23 days in May but down slightly from the 26 days we saw in June 2025. That 3.85% year-over-year improvement breaks a streak of three straight months in which days on market was perfectly flat compared to the prior year, and it is the first year-over-year decline we have recorded in some time. The month-over-month increase of roughly 8.70% is a normal seasonal drift, as the most competitive listings tend to clear the market in the spring and the summer inventory build gives buyers more room to deliberate. What stands out is how much healthier this summer looks than last: by August of 2025, days on market had stretched to 32.5 and kept climbing to 34 by the fall. Starting from 25 days instead of 26 gives the market a bit more cushion heading into that seasonal slowdown.

Orange County tips back toward sellers