November 2025 California Housing Market Update

Hey, welcome back. In today's video, we're going to talk about the latest trends we're seeing right now for the California housing market. We're going to talk about housing inventory, home sales, home prices, and much, much more. If you guys are new here, please subscribe if you haven't done so already. I post frequent, as much as I can, housing market updates nationwide, but also in California and Florida as well. So with that said, let's begin today's video. I have a lot to share. So this slide show is from the California Association of Realtors. They do an amazing analysis of what's happening in California, but I'm going to provide my own details and analysis, especially regarding home prices and inventory levels. Some kind of like a different trends we're seeing right now. So this video, by the way, is only looking at existing houses, which means not new houses. So excluding new home construction. And on top of that, we're only talking about single family houses as well for California, of course. So this was just released a few days ago for October. There's approximately a three week lag in announcing their data. So existing home sales are up by 4.1% from 12 months ago. That was October 24. The median sale price, the middle number is just under $890,000, a decrease down by 0.2% from October of 2024. I'm going to share a lot more trends regarding that. But a simple note here, the change in prices has been in the red or negative for four out of the past six months. More on that later. The unsold inventory index, 3.2 months supply, a small increase from one year ago. This right here is indicative of a more balanced housing market compared to when this number was in the, what, around two months supply about three years ago. It was a strong seller's market in which sellers had an advantage over homebuyers. And now the tides are changing somewhat. I'll share how this number compares to a year's past, especially looking at 2019 though. Days in the market is at 32 days. This means on average, it took about 32 days to sell home. You have a house for sale. You list it for sale. Approximately 32 days later, you accept an offer from homebuyer, a huge increase up by 28%. But I'll share some trends here because the actual number is very small compared to the large percentage. So a large percentage of a small number. All right, let's talk about home sales. So home sales actually, it says continue to improve in October, rose by 4% year over year and up by 1.9% compared to September though. But the biggest takeaway I have here is that we basically have had like three years of a extremely low level of transactions ever since really the last part of 2022. And it's actually more normal to have kind of a range around 400,000. Now we have 282,000. So sales have remained very, very low for quite some time. So they also provide this as well, sales by price bracket or price tier. So every single one of these price tiers reported an increase in home sales compared to October of 2025. We are no longer seeing a huge surge in luxury home sale properties. I guess it depends on where you're located, but homes over $1 million are no longer surging, which in my opinion, we're kind of impacting the overall states meeting the sole price. When we had a huge increase in houses that sold for over $2 million, that could kind of skew overall the numbers. But right now we're seeing all price tiers increasing, but not surging. And one thing I do want to mention about this as well, home sales for less than $300,000 surge by 14%. However, I would imagine based on the median sole price at around $900,000 right now, the number of home sales for less than 300,000 in October in California are probably very, very small. So therefore it's likely a big percentage increase based on a small number. So kind of like a nothing burger in my opinion. Also this as well, this kind of shows how expensive California is. You guys all know, I'm a realtor here in Sacramento. For home sales over $1 million, that was 35% of all transactions. So about one third of all home sales in California in October were for a property that sold for over $1 million. Compare that to the national average, you're looking at around 400,000 for average home price. So let's look at pending home sales. We'll talk about a lot of other trends here in a little bit. So pending home sales, which is a measure of home buyers getting their offers accepted rose by 0.8%. A small increase for three consecutive months. Now, obviously this pales in to the giant surge we saw in 2021, where pending sales rose by about 80%. And also it's much higher though, compared to the downturn we had, the last correction we had in California and nationwide in 2022, where the number of pending home sales cratered. They were down by about 50% at this time in 2022. Now we're up slightly by nearly 1%. All right. Let's talk about prices. You guys all know, I have a lot to share regarding that. I make this video every month for you guys, right? So California's meeting home sale price is stabilizing in recent months. And actually, the data actually supports that. So we're up by 0.4% compared to September and we're still down by 0.2% year over year. All right. Let's have a look at how all this compares to years past, especially looking at pre-COVID levels. So we're right at $886,000, just under $887,000. A decrease down by 0.2% from October 24. And again, a slight increase compared to last month. So looking at the percent decrease down by 0.2% year over year. That's much lower than the average gain of 7.9% for the month of October, going back to 2010 based on my nerdy Excel formula there. I mean, last year at this time, we were up by 5.8%, 2023, 5.2%. We're flat in October of 2022. And look at the fallout in prices there. The peak decline was actually in April of 23 down by 8.2%. And some markets frankly have not recovered from that correction we had then. Looking at pre-COVID though, pre-COVID October 19 up by 5.8%, October 18 up by 4.7%. So this decrease down by 0.2% is much lower than historical averages during this time. Also as a note right there, this marks the fourth month this year so far in which prices are negative year over year. However, prices have been negative from the previous year only 12 times since March of 2012. So there's only been 12 months since March of 2012 in which prices decrease compared to the previous year. So Now here's something that's a little bit different as well. So prices rose by 0.4% compared to September. It's better than the historical decrease we should have seen this year because historically speaking, the average September to October change going back to 2010 is a decrease down by 1%. This year it actually increased by 0.4%. Something I noticed as well is that the all-time record high was set back in April of 25. We're at $910,000 then. We haven't seen a big decline since really July. So back in July, the decrease compared to the peak was down by $26,000 and now we're down by $23,000. And that's because really home prices really haven't changed a whole lot this year. We've basically seen small declines and of course small increases ever since really April of 25. And looking forward though, we should expect to see small decreases in prices, which would be normal. We tend to see a decline in median sole prices in California, other states, and of course nationwide as we go into the winter months as home buyer demand actually decreases. Can't talk. I also want to share this as well. I just made a video, the last video I made regarding how much money housing crash bros or those YouTube channels in which they've been telling us that housing crash is happening right now. And they've been saying this ever since 2020, right? Ever since then, in California at least, we've been seeing a gain up by 47%. So compared to October of 2019, California's median sole price is up by nearly 50%. I should say this 0.2% decline we saw this year pales in comparison to what happened during the great recession. Back then in one single year, we saw a decrease down by 39%. And that my friends was due to the fact, of course, due to all these bad loans, but more importantly, due to a huge decrease in demand and a giant increase in supply. All right, going back to this slideshow, the average sale price to list price ratio was at 98.3% this October, a slight increase compared to last month, but down from 12 months ago. So this means on average homes sold for 1.7% below the seller's final asking price. So if you guys are looking to get a good deal on a home today, overall in California, houses are selling for less than the seller's asking price. In California, our average number of offers received is around one to two offers compared to the spring home buying season of 22 and 21. On average, we got about six offers received. Now it's about one or two. So we have more options for home buyers and on top of that, less competition for those houses as well. And of course the data supports that as well, because only 31% of the time this October, we had homes on average selling over the seller's asking price. This means that what around 70% sold at or below the seller's asking price. That percent is lower than 12 months ago, but of course it pales in comparison during the spring home buying season of 22 and 2021. And just to be honest with you guys, it's not really fair to compare this percent in the spring home buying season because it's actually normal to see more houses selling over the seller's asking price during the spring home buying season compared to the fall and winter months like we're seeing right now. One thing I want to mention as well regarding this is that it's actually a little bit more affordable to buy a house in California than it was about 12 months ago. This is due to the fact that home prices have decreased a little bit and mortgage rates have also decreased as well. I believe they're pulling numbers here from Fannie Mae looking at average 30 year fixed rates have decreased slightly. And therefore, because of that, and of course, because home price growth has actually gone down, your average monthly mortgage payment to buy a medium price home in California. So average price home in California is actually down by 2%. So overall your average monthly housing payment, if you were to buy a home today compared to 12 months ago, would be a decrease down by 2%. So affordability has slightly, emphasis on slightly, slightly improved. All right, moving on, let's talk about inventory numbers. So the month's supplies at 3.2 months this October, that's basically flat from 12 months ago. It does pale in comparison to the great recession where we had over a 10 month supply. So how does this all compare to years past, especially looking at pre-COVID, right? So this October we're at 3.2 months. Compare that to October of 2019, three months supply. So we're basically flat looking at pre-COVID levels, but actually lower than the average October because these numbers are not seasonally adjusted. So we could have kind of like seasonal variations throughout the year. So it's better to compare this October compared to previous ones, right? So the average October since October of 2010 is a 3.4 month supply. Therefore we're currently at slightly lower levels compared to historical norms, but well below the crash during the great recession. The peak was January 08, where the month's supply was nearly a 17 month supply. So pretty wild how low inventory is compared to 08, yet it is much higher compared to the all-time record low that was set back in 2021. All right, going back to this October at a 3.2 month supply, inventory has actually been going down at 3.2 months. This is actually the lowest levels all year. And we have to go back to December of 2024 to get at a lower level of supply. It's also flat compared to a year ago when it was at 3.1 months. The reason for this dip this October is from an increase in sales and a decrease in the number of houses for sale or house inventory. So of course, if you guys want to see home prices absolutely crater in California, the month's supply is basically moving in the opposite direction. If you guys want to see home prices absolutely crater, these figures would have to be skyrocketing, right? Not to say that it's a suggesting or showing us that the month's supply is actually going down. Now, speaking of that, they actually don't share the actual number of homes for sale in California, but they do provide this chart. It says active listings, which is the total number of houses for sale, is following seasonal patterns. In other words, inventory tends to peak in the late summer months. Then it starts increasing around the start of the more or less each and every year, right? Slow increase, and then a decrease in the winter months. For the month of October, inventory is higher than October of 2020 through October of 2024 for the month of October, but still lower than pre-COVID levels. Again, they don't show the actual numbers, but just kind of eyeballing this, we're slightly higher than last year, much higher than 23, and a little bit higher compared to 2022. But looking at October of 19 and October of 2018, we had around, what, 55,000 to 50,000 houses for sale. Right now we have approximately, just eyeballing this, around 45,000. Now what's happening though is actually the growth rate is actually losing momentum though. Looking at the year of year change, it says here, growth in active listings, or the amount of houses per sale, posted the smallest gain since February of 2024. They're talking about this figure right here, where inventory only increased by 10% from the same timeframe last year. That gain up by 10.3% year over year is the smallest year over year gain since February of 2024. Again, if the growth rate was absolutely skyrocketing, then of course we should expect to see a big decline in home prices, but it's actually moving in the opposite direction. Has been doing that pretty much all year though as well. Up by only 10% compared to around the summer months here, we're up by about 60%. Okay, let's also talk about how fast or how slow houses are selling. Remember that figure where days in the market, again, the timeframe you list your home for sale, you accept an offer, the home eventually sells, that's days in market. The timeframe when your house was actually actively for sale, that was at 32 days. So compare that to one year ago, it was 25 days. So you could say that days in the market absolutely surged by 28%. That's what Crash Bros would say, right? Or it's taking seven days longer on average to sell a home in California. Both are true. Therefore, in other words, it's a large percentage based on a small number, in my opinion. I also want to share this as well. The share of listings with a reduced price that was at 41.9%. This means four out of every 10 houses that sold in October, the seller reduced their asking price. That's slightly higher compared to pre-COVID levels. And again, they don't share the actual numbers here. I wish I had a spreadsheet showing this, but just eyeballing this, the share of reduced price listings is higher than the past couple of years, maybe lower than 2022, but it appears to be a slightly higher compared to the average from October 15 through October of 2019. With that said, hope you guys got a lot of value out of today's video. If you want a real estate agent referral, check out my website, which is realestateteamfinder.com. Have an amazing day. I appreciate you so much. And also stay tuned for my part two of this video. I tend to make a overall video like I did today, looking at averages for the state, but stay tuned for my next video. I'll go over each of the counties as well. With that said, have an amazing day and we'll see you on the next video.