San Diego Market Watch - Real Estate Update For January 2, 2026

Home inventory continues its holiday nosedive in San Diego County. Will it come back after the first of the year? Stick around for a couple of minutes and I'll talk about what's going on. Happy New Year and welcome to everybody's favorite San Diego County real estate information program, San Diego Market Watch. If you're new to this channel, please give us a like and subscribe so you don't miss any of these weekly updates. We are back here each and every week breaking down the major metrics in the San Diego real estate market. So let's get right into what's been happening over the last seven days. And of course, we have had New Year's Day, we've had Christmas, we've had New Year's Eve, we've had a lot of holidays in the last couple of weeks. So obviously that means people are focused on that and they're not focused on listing homes and buying homes. So yes, inventory is down and activity overall is way down. However, this trending down of inventory has been going on for nearly the past six months. Inventory was over 7,000 units or right around 7,000 units in the summertime and it's just been going down and down and down and down ever since. And here we are at the lowest level we have seen in many, many months, under 4,000 units on the market. And with that, new listings were up just a tiny bit last week, although nowhere near the level that they were at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Pending sales have been generally trending down, although I do expect to see those bounce up. Now, what's going on here with price reductions? Again, not a lot of activity, not a lot of new listings, not a lot of pending sales happening in the past couple of weeks. Although between the 24th and the 31st, we did see a little bit of a jump in price reductions, which means there are some sellers out there who are trying to jumpstart that listing and get that thing sold. So that's a little bit interesting. Although back here, again, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, we were seeing closer to 9% a week in terms of percentage of inventory that was reducing price on an active listing. Now, this is probably the most interesting metric that we're dealing with right now. 6.15 is the seven-day Freddie Mac primary mortgage market survey average. Although right now, today, I believe we are at a 15-month low in interest rates. I don't know that this 6.15 number is a 15-month low, but I did read that we were today, this morning, at a 15-month low, and it may have popped up again a little bit. But 6.15 is the average, and many, many experts are saying that things are likely to remain about the same throughout 2026. Although we have been listening to and looking to all of these experts over the last three years or more to figure out what's going to happen with interest rates, and the bottom line is nobody knows for sure what's going to happen with interest rates. Although if things keep moving along the way they are, we're likely to see a lot more of the same in 2026. So are these rates enough to get more buyers off the fence and into the market? Are they enough to get more sellers to make that move that they've been waiting to make? Only time will tell. If you have any questions about what this all means for you and your personal real estate goals, send us a message, give us a call. We're always happy to talk, and conversations are free. So with that, I will say thank you for tuning in. Once again, Happy New Year, and stay tuned for more great real estate information. We'll see you right back here.