ORANGE COUNTY MARKET REPORT
Why Good Homes Sit: What 1,058 Stalled Orange County Listings Tell Buyers and Sellers This Fall
By Parisa Houshangi, Keller Williams
There is a conversation I have with sellers every fall, and it always starts the same way. We will list a little high, they tell me, because we can always come down. It sounds reasonable. It is also the single most expensive decision a seller can make in this market, and the Orange County data now shows exactly how expensive.
As of the most recent count, 1,058 active listings in Orange County have been sitting on the market longer than 90 days. That is roughly one in five of everything currently for sale. Almost none of those are bad homes. Most of them are perfectly good properties in good neighborhoods that were priced for the market their owners hoped for rather than the one buyers are actually shopping in.
The window is shorter than most sellers think
Countywide, the median Orange County home is going under contract in about 46 days, with an average of 65. Break that down by price and the picture sharpens. Homes between $1 million and $2 million are the fastest moving segment in the county at a median of 41 days. Homes under $1 million sit at 42. Above $2 million, the median stretches to 57 days across roughly 1,300 active listings.
Those medians hide something important. A listing does not get an even amount of attention across 46 days. The first two weeks are when it gets almost everything. Saved search alerts fire, agents preview it for clients who have been waiting, and the buyers who already know the neighborhood come through the first weekend. If the price is wrong during that stretch, that audience moves on and does not come back. By week six, the listing has become part of the scenery, and the only question buyers ask is what is wrong with it.
What the expired listings actually tell us
The clearest evidence is in the homes that never sold at all. In Newport Beach over the past six months, 45 listings expired at a median asking price of about $7.89 million after sitting an average of 105 days, and another 92 were canceled. That is 137 sellers who came off the market without a sale against 231 who closed. In Irvine, 98 single family listings expired at a median of roughly $2.72 million and 181 more were canceled, while the homes that actually sold closed at a median near $2.05 million in about 18 days. Tustin tells the same story in miniature. Homes priced around $1.4 million sold in eleven days. Listings that pushed toward $1.6 million expired after roughly 100 days.
None of that is a sign of a weak market. Orange County values have held up all year, and homes priced under $2.5 million are still closing within about 1.3 percent of asking. Above $2.5 million the average gap widens to roughly 4 percent, which works out to nearly $188,000. The pattern is consistent everywhere I look. Buyers here are informed, they track price per square foot, and they simply do not engage with a number they believe is wrong.
For buyers, a stale listing is often the best thing on the market
If you are buying in Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita or Dana Point right now, do not skip past the listings that have been sitting. A home at day 95 is frequently a seller who has finally accepted where the market has been since June, and that is a very different negotiation than the one you will have on a home that listed on Thursday. Ask for the full price history before you write. Ask how many reductions there have been and how far apart they came. A seller who has cut twice in eight weeks is telling you something useful about their motivation.
The fix is almost always the first number
Pricing correctly is not the same as pricing low. It means listing inside the band where buyers in your specific neighborhood are actually searching, which is rarely the same as the county median and is almost never the number a seller arrives at on their own. A home priced right earns its offers during the two weeks when the most people are paying attention, and it usually closes nearer to asking than the home that spent three months chasing the market downward.
If you are thinking about listing this fall, the conversation worth having is not what your home could be worth in a better market. It is what a qualified buyer will pay for it in the next 30 days, and what small preparation moves would raise that number. I am glad to walk through your comps and show you exactly where the buyers in your neighborhood are looking.
I am Parisa Houshangi, one of Orange County’s top real estate agents with more than 25 years of experience serving this market, and proud to rank in the top 1.5 percent of real estate agents nationwide.
Keller Williams · OcBeautifulHomes.com · DRE# 01314175
