Mid-Year Market Check-In: How 2026 Is Actually Shaping Up
Every January I make the same joke to my clients: the person giving mortgage advice on your For You page has no idea what your specific street looks like. Six months later, I still believe that, and this year gave me plenty of reasons to keep saying it. Some stretches felt like nothing was moving. Then spring hit and it felt like every buyer who'd been sitting on the sidelines showed up at once. That's not a headline. That's just what happened up here.
We're past the halfway point of 2026, which means it's a good time to stop guessing and look at what the data actually says. You already know how I feel about real estate headlines. They're behind, they flatten a dozen different mountain towns into one number, and sometimes they're just wrong.
So here's the real recap, straight from the county's own numbers, and what it means heading into fall.
Inventory: Where We Started vs. Where We Are Now
The numbers, from the Santa Cruz County Association of REALTORS®'s January and July single-family market reports.
Active single-family listings countywide in January: 274
Active single-family listings countywide in July (the most recent county report available): 444
That's an increase of about 62% since the start of the year
Inventory didn't creep up this year. It climbed, and it climbed fast. January is always the slowest month up here, fewer sellers want to list a mountain home in the middle of the rainy season, so some of that jump is normal seasonal rhythm. But a 62% increase is a real shift, not a rounding error.
Up in the mountains specifically, the same pattern holds, according to the same county reports. Boulder Creek went from 34 active listings in January to 42 in July. Felton went from 11 to 23. Ben Lomond went from 9 to 16. Scotts Valley went from 11 to 33. Those are small towns, so the raw numbers will always look different than a countywide headline (that's exactly the kind of nuance the general news skips), but the direction is the same everywhere. Sellers who held off in 2025 came back this spring.
What this means heading into fall: more options for buyers than we've had in a while, especially compared to the tight, low-inventory market a lot of people still picture when they think about buying up here. It's not a flood. It's a real, meaningful increase in choice, and I expect that to hold rather than tighten back up before the end of the year.
Prices: The First Half vs. Second Half Story
The numbers, also from the county's January and July reports:
Median single-family sale price countywide in January: $1,028,300
Median single-family sale price countywide in July: $1,175,000
Change so far this year: up about 14%
Here's the nuance worth sitting with. That 14% isn't one smooth climb. January's median gets pulled down by a slow month with fewer sales closing. By July, both the volume and the mix of homes selling had shifted with the busier season, so some of that increase reflects more higher-end homes closing, not necessarily the same house being worth 14% more than it was on New Year's Day.
The nuance by area is where a countywide number genuinely stops telling the truth. Boulder Creek's median moved from $792,500 in January to $880,000 in July, with a similar number of homes selling both months, so that's a real move for that market. Felton and Ben Lomond told a different story. Both towns had exactly one closed sale in January. When a town's monthly median is really just the price of one house, it isn't a market trend, it's a data point. That's exactly why I don't let a client make a pricing decision off a single headline number for a town this small. You look at the actual comps, not the town-wide average.
Days on Market: Has the Pace Changed?
The numbers, from the county's January and July reports:
Average days on market countywide in January: 89 days
Average days on market countywide in July: 46 days
This is the number that surprised me most this year, and it's the one worth paying attention to if you're deciding when to list. Homes are moving in almost half the time they were in January. Some of that is the usual seasonal picture, winter listings sit longer, and mountain roads and rain don't help. But a 48% drop is bigger than a typical season shift. It tells me the buyers out there right now are ready. They've done their homework, they know what a fair mountain price looks like, and when a home is priced right, they move on it.
What that looks like in real life: I'm not seeing offers within hours the way people remember from a couple of years ago, and I don't expect that to come back this year. But well-priced, well-prepared homes are going under contract in a few weeks instead of a few months. The homes still sitting past 90 or 100 days are, almost without exception, either overpriced or carrying a real, fixable problem the seller hasn't dealt with yet. Buyers can tell the difference. They always could. It's just more obvious now that they have more to choose from.
Interest Rates: More Movement Than It Looked Like
The short version: the 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.16% the week of January 8, then actually dropped to 6.06% by mid-January, a three-year low at the time, according to Freddie Mac. If you'd told most buyers back then that rates would climb back to 6.66% by late August, they probably wouldn't have believed you. But that's what happened. Rates aren't dramatically different from a year ago, Freddie Mac has them only marginally higher than August 2025, but the path through 2026 hasn't been the flat line a lot of people assume. It's a real move, just not a dramatic one, and Fannie Mae's most recent housing forecast doesn't show meaningful relief arriving before 2027 either. (These are national averages. Your actual rate depends on your lender, your credit, and your specific loan, so treat this as context, not a quote.)
What this means: buyers have made peace with rates in the 6s. Nobody's waiting around for 4% anymore, and that shift in mindset is doing more to drive this year's activity than the small rate movements themselves. People who were ready to move found a way to make the math work, whether that meant adjusting their price range, buying down a rate, or deciding that waiting wasn't actually free either.
The Bottom Line: What the Second Half of 2026 May Look Like
For sellers: if you're thinking about listing before the end of the year, the biggest thing working in your favor is that buyers are active and closing fast when a home is priced and presented well. The thing working against you is that you now have real competition. Sellers listing with deferred maintenance, an outdated septic report, or a price based on what a neighbor got two years ago are the ones sitting past 90 days. If you're ready to do the prep work, this is still a solid window. If you're not, it might be worth waiting until you are.
For buyers: competition has genuinely eased since January. You have more homes to actually choose from, and more room to negotiate on the ones that have been sitting a while. That doesn't mean it's easy. Rates are still real, insurance up here still takes homework, and the homes that are genuinely ready to live in still draw multiple offers. But the frantic, everything-gone-in-a-weekend feeling from a couple of years ago just isn't today's reality.
For everyone: halfway-point data isn't a prediction. It's a snapshot. The second half of the year always writes its own story, fire season, the holidays, whatever happens with rates between now and December. But knowing where we actually started makes it a lot easier to read what comes next, instead of reacting to whatever headline shows up in your feed.
Here's exactly what to do if you're trying to figure out what this means for you
I'm happy to walk you through what's actually happening in your specific price range and neighborhood, not just the countywide averages you just read.
→ Reach out through my contact page and tell me what's going on with your situation. We'll talk through what the second half of the year looks like for you.
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