The Big Story
Quick Take:
- 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.
Note: You can find the charts & graphs for the Big Story at the end of the following section.
*National Association of REALTORS® data is released two months behind, so we estimate the most recent month's data when possible and appropriate.
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
Inventory data runs one month ahead of the other figures, and it tells us the supply build that defined the first half of the year has reversed course. July inventory came in at 1,540,000 homes, a 1.91% decline from the 1,570,000 available in both May and June, and now 0.65% below the 1,550,000 we had at this time last year. That is a notable shift, because inventory had been running above year-ago levels through the spring. New listings reinforce the story.
Sellers brought 423,732 new listings to market in July, an 8.58% drop from June and 2.55% below last July's 434,816. Seasonality explains part of that decline, since listing activity typically peaks in late spring, but the year-over-year decrease suggests homeowners are becoming a bit more hesitant as rates push back toward 6.7%. Fewer new listings combined with steady sales activity means the pool of available homes is likely to keep thinning through the back half of the summer.
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
When determining whether a market is a buyers’ market or a sellers’ market, we look to the Months of Supply Inventory (MSI) metric. The state of California has historically averaged around three months of MSI, so any area with at or around three months of MSI is considered a balanced market. Any market that has lower than three months of MSI is considered a seller’s market, whereas markets with more than three months of MSI are considered buyers’ markets.
Nationally, 1,540,000 homes for sale against a sales pace of 4,060,000 homes per year works out to roughly 4.5 months of supply, which puts the country as a whole comfortably in buyers' market territory by California's three-month yardstick. That said, the trend is moving in sellers' favor. A year ago the same math produced closer to 4.6 months, and with inventory down 1.91% month over month, new listings down 8.58%, and sales holding above last year's level, supply is tightening rather than loosening. The counterweight is affordability: with the median P&I payment back at year-ago levels and August rates at 6.69%, demand could soften enough to keep the balance where it is. As always, real estate is a highly localized asset, which is why you should check out what's going on in your local market below in the Local Lowdown!
Big Story Data
The Local Lowdown
- The median single-family home in Orange County sold for $1,490,000 in June, up 1.36% from a year ago and marking the fourth consecutive month of year-over-year appreciation.
- Inventory has now come in below last year's levels for three straight months, with July's 4,823 active listings sitting 2.60% below where they were a year ago.
- Days on market ticked down on a year-over-year basis for the first time in months, with the median listing spending 25 days on the market in June.
Note: You can find the charts/graphs for the Local Lowdown at the end of this section.
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
When determining whether a market is a buyers’ market or a sellers’ market, we look to the Months of Supply Inventory (MSI) metric. The state of California has historically averaged around three months of MSI, so any area with at or around three months of MSI is considered a balanced market. Any market that has lower than three months of MSI is considered a seller’s market, whereas markets with more than three months of MSI are considered buyers’ markets.
As of June, Orange County has 2.8 months of supply, which nudges the county back below the three-month threshold and into modest seller's market territory. That is a 6.67% decline from May's 3.0 months and a much more substantial 17.65% drop from the 3.4 months of supply we saw in June 2025. That year-over-year gap is the real story here, and it lines up neatly with what we are seeing in the inventory and days on market figures. A year ago, Orange County was drifting into buyers' market territory as supply piled up through the summer, with MSI peaking at 3.4 months in June 2025 before slowly working its way back down. This year, the county has spent the last four months hovering between 2.8 and 3.0 months, holding the line right at the balanced-to-seller's boundary. With prices near record highs, inventory running below last year, and listings moving marginally faster, sellers head into the back half of the year in a stronger position than they occupied twelve months ago.
