Everyone Says This Market Has Cooled Off. The Sold Data Says Sellers Are Still Winning.

Ask around the territory right now and you'll hear the same thing: things have slowed down. Homes are sitting longer. Buyers have more room to think. That part is true.

Here's what the data actually says, though: sellers have not lost the upper hand. Over the twelve weeks ending August 30, 2026, the median sale-to-list ratio across the territory came in at 100%, and 40.4% of homes sold above their asking price. That is not a market where buyers are calling the shots.

The days-on-market number is the piece feeding the "cooling" narrative. Median days on market for the territory landed at 43 days, up from 39 days the same period a year earlier. So the story people are telling isn't fabricated. It's just half the picture.

The sale-to-list ratio moved the other direction. It rose to 100%, compared with 99.5% a year earlier. Slower and firmer, at the same time. That's the tension worth sitting with: a longer wait to get an offer, but the offer that shows up still tends to hold at or above the number on the sign.

The territory closed 1,984 homes in the period, against 2,012 the same period a year earlier. Close to flat, not a collapse.

The pattern isn't uniform underneath that territory figure, which is where it gets interesting locally. In San Ramon, the median sale price fell 6.26% year over year.

That same San Ramon market saw its average sale-to-list ratio rise 2 percentage points over the same comparison. Buyers are paying less for the same home, and sellers are giving up less ground to close the deal. That's not what a straightforwardly weak market looks like.

Fremont carried a similar shape: median sale price there down 9.55% year over year.

Fremont's average sale-to-list ratio still rose half a percentage point over that same stretch.

Livermore saw price down 8.5% year over year.

Livermore's average sale-to-list ratio also rose half a percentage point. Three separate markets, the same tension each time: price giving ground, leverage not.

Timing tells its own story too. In Discovery Bay, the median time to pending ran 46 days.

In Fremont, one of its markets saw the same measure run just 24 days. One buy box, two very different clocks, a reminder that "the market" is really several markets stacked together.

What does this mean if you're deciding something this fall? If you're selling, the days-on-market number is real: expect a longer runway before an accepted offer, and build that into your plan. But price defensively and you are still likely to see a number at or above your list price, not below it, that part hasn't slipped. If you're buying, don't assume the longer timelines hand you leverage on price. The territory-wide data says sellers are still getting what they're asking for, and then some, in four out of every ten sales.

What would change this read? Watch whether the sale-to-list ratio holds through the fall, even as days on market keeps climbing. If sale-to-list starts sliding alongside slower days, that's a real shift in who has leverage. Right now, one of those two things moved and the other didn't, which is a different story than the one making the rounds.

This update draws on MLS sold data for the territory covering Discovery Bay, Brentwood, Fremont, Livermore, Newark, Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Union City, Milpitas and San Jose.

Michael Tessaro, REALTOR-Emeritus