Published October 18, 2026 in Market Update

Price cuts are rising nationally, and parts of Coastal OC show why

By Your Realtor James Deokar

Real estate, BUY BOX 2 — Coastal OC Expired Opportunity

Realtor.com reported that 20.8% of listings nationally had price cuts in September 2026. That is the highest share since October 2022. If your home sat on the market and did not sell, that number is not a coincidence. It is a pattern, and parts of Coastal OC are living it.

The Real Estate Data Aggregator counted 825 homes sold across Coastal OC in the three months ending August 31, 2026. That is down 4.5% from the same three months in 2025. At the same time, new listings rose 5.4% to 1,014. More homes came to market. Fewer sold. That combination gives buyers choices, and choices give them patience.

What buyers actually paid versus what sellers asked

Sale-to-list ratios tell you how close to asking price a home actually closed. In some ZIP codes, sellers got very close to their number. In others, the gap was real. Here is how the ten ZIP codes in this market compared in the three months ending August 31, 2026, according to the Real Estate Data Aggregator.

ZIP 92646 in Huntington Beach averaged 100.3%, meaning buyers there paid list price or a hair above it on average. ZIP 92657 in Newport Coast averaged 94.4%. That is a meaningful gap. A seller priced at $8,800,000, the median in 92657 per the Real Estate Data Aggregator, who expected full list would have been off by roughly 5.6 cents on every dollar.

The ZIP codes where the gap widened the most

The sale-to-list ratio fell in several ZIP codes compared with the same period in 2025. The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows 92657 dropped 1.9 points, 92627 dropped 1.2 points, and 92663 dropped 0.7 points. Those are not dramatic swings on their own, but they move in the same direction as the national price-cut trend Realtor.com reported.

Fewer homes are going above list price

The share of homes that sold above list price fell in nearly every ZIP code. The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows 92627 dropped 13.3 points, 92647 dropped 13.7 points, and 92660 dropped 9.6 points. In 92663, only 4.6% of homes sold above list. That means roughly 19 in 20 homes there did not see a bidding war.

Buyers are still out there. They are just more selective.

Pending sales across the ten ZIP codes totaled 887 in the three months ending August 31, 2026, per the Real Estate Data Aggregator. That is only down 1.2% from the same period in 2025. Buyers are writing offers. They are simply not stretching past list the way they did a year ago.

Some ZIP codes still moved quickly. The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows 43.5% of homes in 92646 went under contract within two weeks of listing. In 92626, 40.5% did. Those are strong numbers. But in 92649, only 22.4% went under contract that fast, and in 92663, only 20% did. Speed and price pressure vary a lot from one community to the next.

Days on market: some ZIP codes are slower than last year

The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows the median home in 92663 sat for 68 days before selling. In 92625, it was 65 days, and that was 11 days longer than the same period in 2025. In 92657, the median was 64 days, up 5 days from 2025. Longer days on market usually signal that the first price was not the right one.

Supply is rising in some parts of the coast

Months of supply measures how long it would take to sell every home currently listed at the current pace of sales. The Real Estate Data Aggregator puts 92657 at 5.0 months of supply, 92660 at 4.6 months, and 92663 at 4.3 months. Those are the highest readings in this group. More supply means buyers have more options, which tends to soften the pressure on any single home.

The national picture adds context

The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that U.S. house prices rose 2.6% from July 2025 to July 2026. Prices are still moving up nationally, just more slowly. Realtor.com reported that the national median asking price fell 0.3% year over year in September 2026, the first decline since March. Those are national figures and do not describe any single street in Coastal OC, but they do explain why buyers here feel less urgency to bid above list.

Mortgage rates add to that picture. Realtor.com reported rates climbed above 7% for the first time since January 2025. A higher monthly payment means buyers have less room to stretch. The typical buyer's monthly payment reached $2,777, the highest level on record except for the previous week, according to reporting from the same period.

What this means if your home did not sell

An expired listing is not a verdict on your home. It is almost always a pricing signal. Buyers in most of these ZIP codes are still writing offers. In 92646, 35.3% of homes sold above list. In 92626, nearly 3 in 10 did. The buyers are there. They are just not willing to pay a price that does not match what the market is actually doing.

The right reset is usually a strategy conversation, not just a number change. Which homes sold near yours? How long did they sit? What did they actually close for, not just list for? Those answers are different on one street than they are across an entire ZIP code.

One block can read very differently from the ZIP code around it. The numbers above are a starting point, not a final answer for your specific home.