The Slowdown Everyone Can See. The Price Drop Fewer Are Talking About.

Ask most sellers in this territory how the market feels right now and you will hear some version of the same thing: buyers are still fighting for houses, offers still come in fast, sellers still call the shots.

Here's what the data actually says.

Across the twenty ZIPs Donny tracks, the median home took 45 days to sell in the twelve weeks ending August 30, up from 35 days the same window a year earlier. That is ten extra days a typical seller now waits before a deal is done, not a small shift. Over the same window, the territory's median sold price came in at $898,086, down from $1,000,000 a year ago.

Slower and cheaper at the same time is not the story sellers are used to telling themselves.

The slowdown was not even across the map. In Livermore, the median time to pending sale ran 33 days in both ZIPs, a pace that held steady rather than stretching further.

Tracy tells a different story. In one of its ZIPs, the median time to pending sale reached 60 days, among the longest waits anywhere in the territory.

That gap, roughly a month between the fastest and slowest corners of the territory, means "the market" is really several markets sharing one report.

Price and leverage data tell a related story, and it does not move in the direction the slower days on market would suggest. Median sold price in one San Jose market fell about 21% year over year. In that same market, sellers held their ground on price: the average sale-to-list ratio there rose about 2 percentage points over the same comparison. Homes there are selling for less, but sellers are conceding less of their asking price to get a deal done.

The same pattern, price down while sale-to-list holds or rises, showed up elsewhere too. In Livermore, one ZIP saw its median sold price fall while the average sale-to-list ratio still edged up over the same comparison.

That is the tension worth sitting with. A market where prices are falling but sellers aren't giving up more ground at the negotiating table does not look like buyers taking control. It looks like sellers adjusting their asking prices before they list, so the number on the sign already reflects where the market actually is. The concession comes earlier, in the pricing, rather than later, in the counteroffer.

For a homeowner thinking about listing here, the 45-day median matters more than any single price figure. Plan for a longer runway between "for sale" and "sold," especially outside Livermore, and price to the market you are actually in rather than the one from a year ago. For a buyer, the extra time on market is room to negotiate, but the sale-to-list data says that room shows up before an offer is written, not after.

What to watch next: whether the median days on market keeps stretching past 45 days, or whether it holds there. A number that keeps climbing points to a market still cooling. One that holds points to a new, slower normal that sellers have already priced into.

Figures above come from MLS sold data for the twelve weeks ending August 30, 2026, compared with the same window a year earlier.