The Orange County Market, August 2026

What the headlines are missing — and what's actually happening on your street

Every August I get some version of the same question: "Is the market good or bad right now?"

That question has no answer, and I mean that kindly. Orange County in August 2026 is not one market. It's at least four, and they are behaving so differently from each other that a county-wide average is about as useful as knowing the average temperature of your oven and your freezer.

So let's skip the average. Here's what the data actually says, what it means if you own a home here, and a few things I promise you are not reading anywhere else.

First, the numbers everyone's quoting

As of the first week of August:

Inventory is up. Pendings just took the largest single-week drop of the year. Rates are at a twelve-month high. If you stopped reading there, you'd conclude the market is falling apart.

It isn't. But something more interesting is going on.

Divergence #1: Orange County is doing the opposite of California

Here's a fact I haven't seen a single local newsletter mention.

Statewide, active listings in June were down 10.4% year over year — the fifth consecutive month of annual declines, and the steepest drop since December 2023. California is getting tighter.

Meanwhile Orange County inventory has climbed nearly every single week since January, from roughly 2,860 listings to over 5,190. We nearly doubled.

We are not participating in the state's inventory story. We are running the other way.

Why does that matter to you? Because if you're a seller reading a national or statewide headline about "tight supply," you are being handed a mental model that does not apply to your listing. You have roughly 5,200 competitors. In January you had about half that.

And if you're a buyer who's been told there's nothing to look at — there is more to look at right now than there has been in years.

Divergence #2: the most honest number in real estate (and nobody publishes it)

Days on market is the most abused statistic in this business, and I want to fix that for you right now.

When you read "median days on market is 41," that number describes the homes currently sitting on the market. It is a measurement of what has not sold. It's a snapshot of the leftovers.

Look at Tustin and North Tustin instead. Over a recent six-month window:

• 178 single-family homes actually closed. Median price: $1,624,000. Median days on market: 11.
• The active listings at the same moment: median asking $2,000,000, sitting at a median of 32 days and averaging 53.
• The homes in escrow landed in between — median $1,724,944, gone in a median of 26 days.

Eleven days. Not forty-one. The homes that sell here sell fast. The gap between the $2,000,000 active median and the $1,624,000 sold median isn't the market slowing down. It's a handful of aspirationally priced listings dragging the top of the pool upward and inflating every average you read.

Now the number that really tells the story — the one that almost never gets published because it's unflattering to sellers and to agents:

• In Irvine, over six months, 98 single-family listings expired at a median of $2,724,000 and another 181 were canceled at a median of $2,650,000. That's 279 sellers who came off the market without a sale, against 437 who closed. Nearly two-fifths of the attempt failed — almost all of it above $2.6M.
• In Costa Mesa, 60 sellers tested $2M and up and didn't find a buyer. Below $1.75M? Homes moved in under two weeks.

Expired and canceled listings are the market's confession. Everything else is marketing.

What's working right now

Pricing to the sold comps, not the active comps. I know that sounds obvious. Look at the expired data again — it clearly isn't. Homes priced under $2.5M are closing within 0.3% of asking. That is essentially at list. Sellers who price honestly are not taking a haircut.

The $1M–$2M band. This is the strongest, most liquid segment in the county, and it's not close. Median days on market: 37. Roughly 86% of listings in that range move within 90 days. It's squeezed from both directions — first-time family buyers pushing up from below, and equity-rich empty nesters coming down from bigger houses in pricier neighborhoods, trading square footage for walkability and a smaller roof to maintain. Demand from two directions at once is why that band never really cools.

Move-in ready. Buyers at 6.66% have no cash left after closing and no appetite for a project. Condition premiums are wider than I've seen in years.

Genuine architectural distinction. Eichlers, Old Towne Orange character homes, well-preserved mid-century — these don't trade on price per square foot, they trade on scarcity and buyer relationships. An algorithm cannot comp a Model LJ-124. It will try. It will be wrong.

Condos and townhomes in the right pockets. Recent weeks have shown condo medians rising while single-family medians chop around. The downsizer wave is real and it's landing here.

What isn't working

Anything priced for 2022. The $2.5M-and-up market is selling 2.8% to 4% under asking depending on the week. On a $3M home, "4% under" is a $120,000 conversation. Above that line, patience is not optional — it's the whole strategy.

Testing the market. "Let's just try a number and see" now costs you 80–120 days, a stale listing, and a price reduction that makes buyers ask what's wrong with the house. In Irvine, expired listings sat a median of 83 days before giving up. That's a full season lost.

Waiting for rates. The 30-year averaged 6.66% the week ending July 30 — a twelve-month high. A year ago it was 6.72%. Two years of "waiting for rates to drop" has produced a rate that's seven basis points better. Meanwhile the median OC single-family home went up about $45,000 year over year. You did not save money by waiting. This is the entire argument behind marry the house, date the rate — you can refinance a rate. You cannot refinance a purchase price you didn't make.

Aggressive flips. ATTOM's Q1 2026 data has 64,348 homes flipped nationally, about 8% of all sales, with gross returns at 25.4% — up slightly, but still well below the 29.6% of a year prior. And gross is before rehab, financing, carry, and selling costs. Orange County is flipper-rich because we have an enormous stock of 1960s and 1970s homes that have never been touched. Some of those flips are beautiful. Some of them are a mid-century home with its soul removed and gray LVP installed over the radiant slab. Buyers can tell. So can appraisers.

The thing almost nobody is writing about: October 15

Put this on your calendar.

On October 15, 2026, the California FAIR Plan implements an average statewide rate increase of 29.1% — the largest in its recent history, bigger than the roughly 20% in 2019 and the ~16% increases in both 2021 and 2023. The Plan asked for 35.8%. The Department of Insurance approved 29.1%.

That average hides the real story. The increase is weighted toward the wildfire portion of the premium, so homes with genuine fire exposure will see far more than 29%. Some will see the wildfire component roughly double. A quarter of policyholders will actually see a decrease.

Context for how we got here: FAIR Plan policies grew 44% between fall 2024 and the end of 2025, to more than 668,600 statewide. That wasn't demand — that was carriers walking away. The January 2025 Los Angeles fires cost the Plan an estimated $4 billion and forced a $1 billion assessment on its member insurers. California homeowners insurance overall is projected to rise about 16% in 2026, against roughly 4% nationally.

Why this is a real estate story, not an insurance story:

If you own in the North Tustin foothills — Lemon Heights, Cowan Heights, Panorama Heights — or anywhere against the hills, insurance is no longer a line item you handle at day 14 of escrow. It is a deal-killer that shows up late and detonates.

What Jill and I are doing about it on every foothill transaction:

• Buyers: get a real insurance quote before you write the offer. Not an estimate. A quote, on that address. Your lender is qualifying you on total payment, and a $6,000 premium surprise can un-qualify you in week three.
• Sellers: pull your own quote before you list. If the answer is ugly, you want to know in advance so we can price and position for it — and so we can document home-hardening work, which increasingly earns real discounts.
• Everyone: if you're currently on the FAIR Plan, shop the private market before October 15. Some carriers have quietly re-entered. It's worth the phone call.

And a correction, since I keep seeing this repeated

You may have read that Zone 0 defensible-space inspections — the new ember-resistant rules for the first five feet around your house — become mandatory at point of sale starting July 2026.

That is not accurate as things stand. The Board of Forestry released an updated draft in April 2026 and the rulemaking is still open. The current draft is explicitly phased and leads with education and outreach rather than penalties. It is coming. It is not here, and there is no locked statewide date.

I'd still clear that five feet. Gravel, hardscape, no woodpiles against the wall, no combustible fencing attached to the structure, no bark mulch hugging the foundation. Insurers are already rewarding documented hardening whether or not the regulation has a date on it. But nobody should be told they're out of compliance with a rule that hasn't been adopted.

The wave that hasn't hit yet

Orange County has been directed to plan for more than 180,000 new homes by 2029, and after years of it being a paperwork exercise, dirt is finally moving:

• The Village at Orange — the old JCPenney becoming 167 for-sale condominiums
• Bolsa Pacific, Westminster — 83 acres of dead mall becoming ~2,250 units, a hotel, and 220,000+ sq ft of retail
• Terravita, Laguna Hills — 480 units replacing an obsolete office campus
• Gateway Village, Irvine — 1,138 homes, broken ground
• Oak Creek Golf Course, Irvine — under study for roughly 3,100 homes

Two things about this that matter and rarely get said.

First, the mix. Roughly half of that pipeline is rental, not for-sale. That distinction is enormous for existing homeowners. A 221-unit apartment building arriving near your neighborhood affects your resale value on a completely different axis than 167 for-sale condos do. Anyone telling you "180,000 new homes will crush prices" hasn't looked at the split.

Second, the timing. Almost none of this delivers before 2027–2028. Whatever you're feeling in the market right now, it is not this. This is the story of the next cycle, and the smart move is to know which projects are landing near you before your neighbors do.

One last number, for perspective

Foreclosure filings nationally rose 21% in the first half of 2026 — 227,548 properties. The hardest-hit states are Florida, South Carolina, and Indiana, and they share one trait: they didn't get the appreciation California got. Thin equity means thin options.

Orange County foreclosure activity is still at historic lows. Not because we're immune to hardship — because when an OC homeowner hits trouble, they have equity. They sell. They don't lose the house.

That is what four years of appreciation actually bought you. Not a number on a Zestimate. A cushion.

So — what would I actually do?

If you're buying: you have more selection than you've had in years, and the seller across the table has more competition than they've had in years. Under $2.5M, expect to pay close to asking for the good ones — they still go in under two weeks. Above $2.5M, negotiate like you mean it. And get your insurance quote up front.

If you're selling: price to the sold comps. Not the actives, not the expireds, and please not the Zestimate. The homes that price correctly in Tustin are gone in eleven days. The ones that price to the ceiling become somebody's cautionary statistic in a report like this one.

If you're staying put: open your insurance renewal before October, and know what's being built within two miles of you.

If you own something architecturally significant — an Eichler, an Old Towne Orange original, anything with real provenance — the market is telling you something specific right now. Generic inventory is piling up. Distinctive inventory isn't. Scarcity is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

Jill and I have been doing this in this county for more than twenty years, through three very different markets. I grew up here. The thing I keep coming back to is that county-wide numbers are a headline, and headlines have never once told anyone what their house is worth.

If you want to know what's actually happening on your street — the real comps, the expireds nobody publishes, what your insurance is about to do — call us. That conversation is free and it takes twenty minutes.

Kelly Laule & Jill Annen| Better Living SoCal Group Old Town Tustin · DRE #01773280 · DRE #01728155

Data sources: California Association of REALTORS® (June 2026 sales and price report); Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (week ending 7/30/2026); CRMLS weekly Orange County housing reports (June–August 2026); S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller (May 2026); ATTOM Q1 2026 U.S. Home Flipping Report; California Department of Insurance FAIR Plan rate filing; California Board of Forestry & Fire Protection Zone 0 draft regulations (April 2026). Market conditions change weekly — figures current as of August 5, 2026.