The Bay Area in August: one region, very different markets.
The regional median barely moved. Under it, San Francisco is up 25% from a year ago and Santa Clara County is flat. Here are the numbers, straight from the California Association of Realtors.
The California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) published its August 2026 report on September 16. For existing single-family homes, the nine-county Bay Area looked quiet: a median of $1,272,000, down 0.2% from a year earlier, with sales down 4.2%. But the counties inside it didn’t move together.
| County | Median price, Aug 2026 | Change vs. Aug 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $1,875,000 | +25.0% |
| San Mateo | $2,250,000 | +13.2% |
| Santa Clara | $1,900,000 | 0.0% |
| Alameda | $1,285,000 | +1.3% |
| Contra Costa | $875,000 | +2.9% |
Supply and speed
- The Bay Area’s unsold inventory index was 2.6 months, down from 2.9 a year earlier. Median time on market was 22 days.
- San Francisco had the largest drop in active listings of any county C.A.R. tracks: down 53.6% from a year ago.
- Statewide, active listings were down 6.2% year over year, but the unsold inventory index rose to 3.7 months, its highest in six months.
A warning from C.A.R. itself: county-level swings can reflect low sales volume and a change in which homes happened to sell, not broad shifts in home values. A +25% median doesn’t mean every San Francisco home gained 25%.
My read: when a county median jumps and the supply of homes for sale shrinks at the same time, the buyer’s job is to compare at the street and block level, not the county level. That’s what the live price data on our neighborhood pages is for.
Sources
This post is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Figures are as reported by the sources above at the time of writing.
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