The market update pages on this site use three-year seasonal averages to answer the questions people actually ask: when to sell, when to buy, how long it takes. This is the post for the people who want to see the whole series behind those averages, from 2018 through the most recent month Zillow has published, for Orange County and the four cities I track most closely.
Everything below is drawn from Zillow Research's public monthly data, unedited, and every chart shades the same four-year window so you can see for yourself why it is excluded from the seasonal math.
The short answer: Since 30-year mortgage rates peaked in October 2023, home values in coastal Orange County have kept climbing, between 12% and 21% depending on the city. What changed is leverage. Buyers now have far more homes to choose from, homes take longer to go pending, and fewer sell above asking. Irvine shifted the most. Newport Beach held its prices best.
What changed since mortgage rates peaked in October 2023?
Freddie Mac's weekly average for a 30-year fixed loan hit 7.79% on October 26, 2023, the high point of this cycle. By September 10, 2026 it was 6.76%, and Mortgage News Daily's daily index put the 30-year at 7.24% on September 16, 2026. Rates came down from the peak, but they have been rising again through late summer, which matters for anyone deciding when to list.
Here is what the same Zillow series show for October 2023 against the latest month Zillow has published.
Market | Home value change, Oct 2023 to Aug 2026 | Sold above list, Oct 2023 | Sold above list, Jul 2026 | Days to pending, Oct 2023 | Days to pending, Aug 2026 | Active listings, Oct 2023 | Active listings, Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Orange County | +12% | 49% | 37% | 13 | 22 | 4,027 | 6,755 |
Newport Beach | +21% | 23% | 16% | 21 | 43 | 276 | 371 |
Costa Mesa | +16% | 45% | 31% | 14 | 23 | 115 | 170 |
Irvine | +17% | 51% | 17% | 13 | 40 | 354 | 954 |
Huntington Beach | +14% | 43% | 38% | 15 | 23 | 341 | 436 |
Home value change uses the Zillow Home Value Index (typical home, all home types, smoothed and seasonally adjusted). Sold above list is the latest month Zillow has published for that series. Source: Zillow Research public data, pulled September 17, 2026.
Three things stand out.
- Prices did not fall when rates were high. Every market is worth more today than at the rate peak. Newport Beach's typical home value rose from about $3.06 million to about $3.70 million.
- Buyers have time and choice again. Orange County has about two-thirds more homes for sale than in October 2023, and the typical listing takes 22 days to go pending instead of 13.
- Irvine flipped the hardest. Its active listings nearly tripled, days to pending went from 13 to 40, and the share of homes selling above asking fell from about half to about one in six. Price cuts now touch 30% of Irvine listings.
What this means if you are thinking about selling
The equity is there. The easy sale is not. In a market where buyers can wait, the homes that sell quickly are the ones priced to the current month's data, not to a neighbor's sale from 2024. And with rates climbing again, every week of waiting can shrink the number of buyers who qualify at your price.
You can check today's mortgage rates, updated daily, and if you want to know where your home sits on these charts, request a personal home value review. I will pull the numbers for your street, not the county.
When did mortgage rates peak?
Freddie Mac's weekly 30-year fixed average peaked at 7.79% on October 26, 2023.
Have Orange County home prices dropped since rates peaked?
No. Zillow's home value index for Orange County is about 12% higher in August 2026 than in October 2023, and all four coastal cities tracked here rose between 14% and 21%.
Is it a buyer's market in Irvine?
Irvine has shifted the furthest toward buyers: more than 950 active listings in August 2026, 40 days to pending, and fewer than one in five homes selling above asking.
Are mortgage rates going up or down in 2026?
As of mid September 2026 they are rising. Freddie Mac's 30-year average moved from 6.65% on August 20 to 6.76% on September 10.
On this page
What changed since mortgage rates peaked
Why the seasonal pages use only three years
Competition: the share of homes selling above asking
The same measure as a calendar, year by year
The sale-to-list ratio, city by city
Speed: median days to pending
Supply: inventory and price cuts
Where 2026 sits against 2019
Definitions, method, and how to pull the data yourself
Why the seasonal pages use only three years
A seasonal average works by lining up the same calendar month across several years and taking the mean. It only tells you something if those years were roughly comparable, so that what is left after averaging is the calendar and not one year's anomaly. The four years from spring 2020 through the end of 2023 were not comparable to anything before or since.
Zillow's home value index for Orange County rose 47% between February 2020 and December 2023, after rising about 3% in the two years before that. Newport Beach rose 60%, Irvine 55%, Costa Mesa 51%, and Huntington Beach 48%. Mortgage rates went from under three percent to over seven in the middle of that window, which is why the curve flattens in 2022 and 2023 without falling. Nothing about those years describes what a normal April or a normal December looks like.
Chart 1 of 8: Zillow Home Value Index, five markets, 2018 to 2026. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
Zillow Home Value Index, smoothed and seasonally adjusted, indexed so that February 2020 equals 100. Shaded band is March 2020 through December 2023. Source: Zillow Research.
The competition measures tell the same story more dramatically. In the spring of 2022, 77% of Orange County homes closed above their asking price and the average home sold for 105.9% of list. In Costa Mesa and Irvine, more than eight in ten homes closed above asking. The median home went pending in about a week. If those months were averaged into a seasonal calendar, they would make every spring look like a frenzy and every winter look like a collapse, and neither would be true of the market you are in.
Market | Value change, Jan 2018 to Feb 2020 | Value change, Feb 2020 to Dec 2023 | Value change since Dec 2023 | Peak sale-to-list (2021 to 2022) | Peak share sold above list | Fastest median days to pending |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Orange County | +3% | +47% | +10% | 105.9% | 77% | 8 |
Newport Beach | +0% | +60% | +18% | 101.6% | 55% | 10 |
Costa Mesa | +4% | +51% | +14% | 107.8% | 82% | 8 |
Irvine | +1% | +55% | +14% | 108.0% | 85% | 8 |
Huntington Beach | +4% | +48% | +12% | 104.0% | 70% | 8 |
Starting the seasonal averages in January 2024 gives three years that share the same rate environment, the same inventory direction, and the same buyer psychology. That is the narrowest window that still averages out a single odd month, and the widest one that does not import the anomaly. It is refreshed each year as another normal year becomes available.
Competition: the share of homes selling above asking
This is the single measure I would keep if I could keep only one. It does not depend on price level, it is not skewed by which estates happened to close, and it answers the question buyers actually have: will I be bidding against someone? All five charts share the same vertical scale so the cities can be compared directly.
Chart 2 of 8: Share of homes sold above list price, five markets. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
Share of homes sold above list price, three-month smoothed monthly series. Same scale on all five charts. Source: Zillow Research.
Two things stand out. First, the seasonal wave is visible in every normal year, including 2018 and 2019, which is what gives me confidence that the 2024 to 2026 pattern is the real calendar and not a passing phase. Second, Newport Beach lives on a different scale from everyone else. Even at the 2022 peak, only about half of Newport homes closed above list; in 2019 it was fewer than one in ten. The luxury market negotiates in every environment.
The same measure as a calendar, year by year
Laying the above-list share out as a grid, one row per year and one column per month, makes the argument for the three-year window without any further commentary. Read the 2021 and 2022 rows against any other row.
Chart 3 of 8: Share sold above list by calendar month and year, Orange County and Irvine. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
Share of homes sold above list, by calendar month and year. Darker is more competitive. 2026 runs through the latest published month. Source: Zillow Research.
The Irvine grid is worth a second look. The 2024 row is the last time the city saw a spring where most homes sold above asking. The 2026 row looks more like 2019 than like anything in between, and that is the honest way to describe what has happened there: not a collapse, a return.
The sale-to-list ratio, city by city
The mean sale-to-list ratio is the average closing price as a share of the final asking price. Above 100% means homes are, on average, selling over asking; below means under. The dashed line on each chart is 100%. Note that Zillow uses the final list price, not the original, so a home that was reduced before it sold shows a smaller discount here than the seller actually gave.
Chart 4 of 8: Mean sale-to-list ratio, five markets. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
Mean sale-to-list ratio, monthly, with 100% marked. Vertical scales differ by city because Newport Beach sits so far below the others. Source: Zillow Research.
Orange County as a whole has been under 100% since mid 2025, which sounds alarming until you see that it was under 100% for all of 2018 and 2019 too. Costa Mesa is the only coastal city still touching the line in the spring. Newport Beach has never been above 100% on an annual basis in this data, including 2022; its normal is two to four percent under, and the seasonal section on the Newport page is built around that fact rather than around the median price.
Speed: median days to pending
Median days from listing to accepted offer. This is the measure with the strongest seasonal shape and the one that changed most during the 2020 to 2023 window, when the county median dropped to about a week.
Chart 5 of 8: Median days to pending, five markets. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
Median days to pending, monthly. Vertical scales differ by city. Source: Zillow Research.
The pattern to notice is the shape of each spring dip. In 2024 the county's April trough was about eleven days; in 2026 it was about fifteen. The trough is still there, at the same time of year, but it is shallower every year, which is the quantitative version of "the market is slower but the calendar has not changed." Irvine's line is the outlier: its winter peaks now run six weeks, roughly where they sat in the slow winters of 2018 and 2019.
Supply: inventory and price cuts
Active inventory is the count of homes for sale at month end. Price cut share is the fraction of those active listings that have reduced their asking price at least once. Together they describe the seller's side of the market: how much competition a listing faces and how many of its competitors have already blinked.
Chart 6 of 8: Active inventory, five markets. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
Active listings at month end. Vertical scales differ by city. Source: Zillow Research.
This is the chart that puts the "inventory is surging" headlines in context. Orange County's inventory in mid 2026 is well above the 2021 to 2023 lows, and still about a quarter below where it sat through 2019. Irvine is the exception again: its active count has returned to the 2019 level, which is why Irvine reads as a buyer's market and the county as a whole does not yet.
Chart 7 of 8: Share of listings with a price cut, five markets. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
Share of active listings with at least one price reduction. Same scale on all five charts. Source: Zillow Research.
Price cut share has a seasonal shape of its own, peaking in late summer and early fall as spring listings age, and it has climbed each year since 2024. The level matters less than the timing: a buyer looking in September or October is looking at the largest pool of reduced listings the year will offer, in every one of these markets.
Where 2026 sits against 2019
The most useful comparison is not 2026 against 2022, which was never going to last, but 2026 against 2019, the last full year before the anomaly. On that comparison the coastal market is still tighter than it was before the pandemic on every measure except Irvine's inventory, and prices are roughly sixty percent higher.
Market | Sold above list, 2019 | Sold above list, 2026 | Sale-to-list, 2019 | Sale-to-list, 2026 | Days to pending, 2019 | Days to pending, 2026 | Active listings, 2019 | Active listings, latest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Orange County | 22% | 34% | 98.4% | 99.4% | 29 | 19 | 9,112 | 6,621 |
Newport Beach | 7% | 16% | 96.1% | 97.0% | 63 | 32 | 670 | 378 |
Costa Mesa | 21% | 39% | 98.4% | 99.7% | 32 | 17 | 229 | 167 |
Irvine | 16% | 21% | 98.2% | 98.1% | 34 | 35 | 918 | 920 |
Huntington Beach | 21% | 33% | 98.5% | 99.3% | 28 | 18 | 549 | 431 |
And the direction of travel over the three years the seasonal pages are built on, so the trend sentences on those pages have their numbers here:
Chart 8 of 8: First half of 2024 against first half of 2026, four measures. Open this chart on the companion charts page.
First half of 2024 against the first half of 2026, same months compared, so seasonality does not distort the change. Source: Zillow Research.
Irvine is the market that has moved. Inventory more than doubled, the above-list share fell by more than thirty points, and time to contract roughly tripled. Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, and Huntington Beach softened by a few points each. The county moved in between, pulled mostly by Irvine's weight in its totals.
Definitions, method, and how to pull the data yourself
Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI): Zillow's estimate of the typical home value for the middle tier of homes in an area, smoothed and seasonally adjusted. It is a value estimate for all homes, not a sale price, which is why it is shown here as an index rather than in dollars.
Mean sale-to-list ratio: the average of each closed sale's price divided by its final list price, for homes sold that month.
Share sold above list: the fraction of closed sales in a month where the sale price exceeded the final list price.
Median days to pending: the median number of days between a listing going live and an offer being accepted, for homes that went pending that month.
Active inventory: homes listed for sale at month end. Price cut share: the fraction of those with at least one reduction.
All monthly series here are Zillow's smoothed versions, which average three months, so a single month's value should be read as a trend point rather than a snapshot. Zillow suppresses city and ZIP figures where sample sizes are small, which is why the four cities here are the four coastal Orange County cities with complete series and why neighborhood-level detail on this site comes from the MLS instead.
Reproduce this
Every series on this page is a public CSV at zillow.com/research/data. Under "Home Values" choose ZHVI, All Homes, Smoothed and Seasonally Adjusted; under "Sales" choose Sale-to-List Ratio and Percent of Sales Above List; under "Days on Market and Price Cuts" choose Median Days to Pending and Share of Listings with a Price Cut; under "Inventory" choose For-Sale Inventory. Download at the County level for Orange County and the City level for the four cities. The same series can be charted without downloading anything in Zillow's Market Explorer. Seasonal averages on the market update pages are the mean of each calendar month from January 2024 through the latest full month, and this page is rebuilt when those averages are refreshed each year. Zillow is an independent source and is not affiliated with Jade Larney or Anvil Real Estate. Compiled September 2026.
The seasonal read for each market, built from this data, lives on the market update pages:
Orange County · Newport Beach · Costa Mesa · Irvine · Huntington Beach
If you would rather have the pattern applied to one specific home, request a private home value review and I will bring the street-level comparables that no public data set has.
