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Santa Clarita Housing Market Update: Half of Sellers Just Lost $19,000 (Aug 23, 2026) · Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: 807 homes are for sale across the Santa Clarita Valley this morning, and that's twenty-three fewer than last Sunday.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the number that should stop every seller mid-coffee.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Of the homeowners who closed escrow here in the last 30 days, 49.5% took less than their asking price, and that median haircut was about$19,000.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, a Spinnaker Point Town home on Victoria Lane and Valencia hit the market seven days later.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was gone at$610,000.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Same valley, same week, two completely different outcomes.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference between them was a decision made before the sign ever went in the yard.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Good day, everybody.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Santa Clarita Open Houses here, August 23rd, 2026.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is your real estate update.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everything happening in our market, single family homes, condominiums, townhomes, pulled straight off the CRMLS feed this morning, plus the national and world stories that actually touch the equity setting under your roof.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on the show today, mortgage rates just fell for the second week in a row, and the biggest Federal Reserve event of this year starts Thursday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with a great brand new Fed chair holding the microphone.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: The single number that separates Santa Clarita sellers who get paid over asking from the ones who chase the market down for a month and a half.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the what if everybody asks me at open houses if layoffs speed up, how fast does that turn into foreclosures?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens if the system cannot keep up?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on to one number for me, and that's 563.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to come back to it.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So let me run the board for you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: 807 active listings valley wide.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let's break that down.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have 463 family single family homes, 207 condominiums, 118 town homes, and 19 of that fall outside those buckets.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Your mobile homes and multi-units.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: On the top of the actives, 174 homes are in escrow, another 126 are active under backup, meaning the seller has a deal, but it's still collecting backup offers behind it, and 14 more sitting in coming soon status.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Teed up to hit the feed in the next few days, closed business.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: 38 homes closed escrow in the last seven days, 200 in the last 30.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Week over week, actives fell by 23 escrow's, rose by 14, and weekly closings came in 14 under the week before.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Read those three arrows together.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Supply is tightening slightly, demand is stepping in, and the closing count wobbles week to week because escrow's close in clumps.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: One quiet week of closings is noise.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Three is not a trend.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: We watch, we don't panic.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: City by city, Valencia carries the flag with 251 actives and 13 closings last week.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's the busiest market in the valley on both sides of the ledger.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Canyon Country holds 181 actives with nine closings.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Saugus, 104 actives and only three closed last week, which is pretty thin for a city that size.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now keep an eye there because Newhall, 96 actives with six closings.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Castax sits at 53.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Acton 38, Stevenson Ranch 33, Santa Clarita Proper 27, and Agua Dolce 24.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fresh inventory today.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Four brand new listings hit the feed this Sunday morning.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Juniper Springs in Canyon Country, Riverview Lane in Valencia, Gold Canyon Drive in Saugus, and a condo on Trumpet Newhall.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday listings are a tell.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: An agent who launches on a Sunday is aiming at the Monday morning search alert wave, and that's exactly how I would play it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Open houses, two doors are open today across the valley.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Next weekend is loaded, 23 open houses already posted.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: 11 on Saturday, 12 on Sunday in Valencia.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Alone accounts for 14 of them.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Most run about 11 to 4, 11 a.m.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: to 4 p.m.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: The full map, every address, every time window lives at Santa Claritoopenhouses.com.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Updated off the live feed all day long.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now the math that turned those counts into a verdict.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take that 807 homes for sale, divide by the 200 that closed in the last 30 days, and you're going to get right about four months of inventory.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: That phrase, months of inventory, is the single most useful number in residential real estate.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take 30 minutes and own it.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: One it answers one question.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: If not one more home came on the market starting today, how long would it be until we sold completely out of the current pace of buying?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, currently, Santa Clarita Valley, that's under four months.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sellers hold the leverage.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers compete, prices firm up between four and six, the market is balanced and negotiation gets real.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Over six, well, that buyers are running the table and prices start to sag.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Santa Clarita is sitting exactly on four today, almost.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're standing on that line between the seller's market and a balanced one, and that's the precise reason why the next number matters as much as it does, because here is what the balance point does to sellers.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the most important 90 seconds of the show, so here we go.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Over the last 30 days, 30.2% of Santa Cruz sellers closed over their asking price, and their median premium was$11,000.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Another 20.3% closed exactly at asking, 49.5% essentially half of the market closed under with a median concession of$19,000.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same value, same month, and the outcome split almost perfectly in half.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what actually separates them?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, time does.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: The seller who got paid over asking went under contract in a median of 23 days.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: The sellers who took the 19 grand haircut set back for a median of 41 days.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So go back 90 days, and the split is even sharper.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: 13 days for the over-asking crowd, and we have 40 for everyone else.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that deeper cut is 44.3% of the homes that closed in the last 30 days took at least one price reduction from their original list price before they found their buyer.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Across all of last month's closings, homes sold at 97.5% of what they were originally being asked for.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's the mechanism: plain and simple, in a four-month market, buyers have just enough choice to skip anything that smells overpriced.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Price at the number that comps defend, and the market rewards you inside three weeks, sometimes with a bidding premium.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, price at the price at the number your neighbor bragged about in 2022, and you're gonna sit.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And every week you sit the eventual buyer discounts, you harder on the other end until you've given back 19 grand in six weeks of your life.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: That Victoria Lane townhome I mentioned up top did it right.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listed at comps, gone in seven days at$610,000.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Pricing isn't a guess anymore.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: The fee grades it in public.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So zoom out to the national picture because rates set the tempo for everything I just read you.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Freddie Mack's weekly survey and the 30-year fixed at 6.65% down from 6.67%, the second straight weekly decline.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The 15 year sits at 5.95%.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Daily trackers are quoting closer to 6.77 for top-tier borrowers, so call that street rate mid-sixes and drifting.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: One year ago, the 30 year was 6.58.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for all the movement, we're basically where we were last August.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: The Federal Reserve is the story of the coming week.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Fed held its rate at 3.50, 3.75 in July.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the minutes release Wednesday showed three regional bank presidents dissented because they wanted a hike, not a cut.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why would anyone hike?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that would be inflation.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: July's consumer price index came in at 3.4% annual, and that's cooling, but still a point and a half above a Fed target.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pulling the other direction, the July Jobs report showed that the economy lost 23,000 jobs, the first outright monthly decline in years.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Weak jobs argue for cuts, sticky inflation argues against.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: That tug of war gets its next round Thursday through Saturday, the Jackson Hole Symposium in Wyoming, where the new Fed chair Kevin Warsh, pronounced Warsh, gives his first keynote Friday morning.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Three weeks before the September rate decision, markets are pricing roughly two in three.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Odds the Fed hold will hold actually in September.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: If Walsh leans hawkish on Friday, mortgage rates feel it by that afternoon.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: National housing itself is soft.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Existing home sales ran at 4.6, 4.06 million annual pace in July.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Median price of$431,400 nationally.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: National supply is 4.6 months, so the country as a whole flipped into balanced territory before we did.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Builders are outright struggling as well.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Housing starts fell 12.4% in July.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Builder Confident reads 35 out of 100, and 35% of builders are cutting prices with an average cut of 6%.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Redfin says new listings nationally just hit a three-month high, and the national median asking price fell year over year for the first time since January.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a piece of industry history closed Wednesday, the Federal Appeals Court affirmed that big commission lawsuit settlement, ending a seven-year legal war.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: The practical effect for us has been in place for a while.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Buyer representation now runs on a written agreement you signed before touring any residents.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everything negotiated in the open.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Good sunlight suits this business.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, California's own numbers landed Monday.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: The statewide median slipped to$887,680 below$900,000 for the first time in months, down 1.9% from June through still a hair above last year.
• 9:25
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: The LA Metro median sits about$849,450.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Southern California at$899,000.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Statewide supply is 3.4 months, tighter than the nation and tighter than us.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Read that carefully.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Santa Clarita at four months has more selection relative to demand than the state average, which is exactly why our buyers have recovered a little spine and half of our sellers are still negotiating.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: One more California item with a deadline attached, the Fair Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, now covering more than 668,000 homes, rolls out overhauled rates October 15th.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Roughly half of policyholders are looking at increases in the 30 to 50% range, while about a quarter actually get decreases.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if your home sits anywhere near a brush zone before your insurance quote, uh get your insurance quote before your list.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Escrow's die over insurance surprises in this county every single week.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now the what if?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the number I asked you to hold on to, remember that?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: People ask me some version of this at every open house.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: What happens if the layoffs get real?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: The current baseline first, so we're arguing from data and not vibes.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Nationally, 227,548 properties at a foreclosure filing in the first half of 2026.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's up 21% from last year.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also about one in every 640 homes in America, well under the 1% margin.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Locally, it is thinner than that.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is not 2008 arriving.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is distress creeping up on a historic floor.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: The stress lives in specific pockets.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: FHA borrowers, the lowest down payment loans are running 11.79%, delinquent nationally.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: VA loans 4.89%.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Overall, 4.37% of all mortgages are behind, up almost half a point in a year.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you run that chain forward, jobs turn negative, and July just did, a layoff household burns savings, then misses month one, month two, month three at 90 days, the lender can file a notice of default, and the clock starts on the legal process, notice, auction date.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if nobody bids, the bank takes it back as an REO, real estate owned property.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's your number, 563.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's the average days right now from first filing to finished foreclosure in America.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the fastest the pipeline has moved since 2013, over a year and a half in the good times.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now the system and with the system so uncrowded, now stress it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: If defaults doubled or tripled, that pipeline doesn't speed up, it actually seizes.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Courts will backlog, trustees backlog, sheriff evictions, queue up for months, and last cycle, some states blew past a thousand days.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Borrowers learn the math and simply stay mortgage unpaid because nobody's coming for the house anytime soon.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I call that the frozen pipeline, the point where the volume of default outruns the machinery of enforcement.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Home stop moving to market, and the crisis hides inside occupied houses instead of showing up in inventory.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's the actual doomsday mechanism, not a wave of for sale signs, a freeze.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: But before anybody spirals, here's the counterweight and it's made of equity.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: The average American homeowner with a mortgage is sitting on six figures of equity.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in Santa Clarita, that cushion runs fatter than that because even our struggling sellers just closed at 97.5% of original asking price.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: A homeowner with equity who loses a job does not get foreclosed.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: They sell.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: They walk with a check, and that's a normal listing, not a bank sale.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Foreclosure waves require two ingredients at once.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: You got your job loss and negative equity.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've had exactly one of those flickering.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Watch three gauges with me each month, the FHA delinquency number, the monthly jobs, jobs prints, and whether that 563-day clock starts to stretch.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those move first, prices move last.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And around the world, two stories worth your minute in China.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: A court handled Evergrande's founder, Huaikauen, a life sentence Thursday for fraud, with more than 50 executives sentenced alongside him and the company fined about 1.3 billion.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Evergrande was the most indebted in indebted developer on earth, and Beijing is letting it liquidate, no bailout after a five-year property slide.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's what a housing market looks like when it runs on borrowed speculation instead of owner-occupant equity.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ours does not.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: In the UK, right move logged the biggest August asking price drop in eight years down 2% in a month to about 365,000 pounds, while their average mortgage rate climbed to 5.09%.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sellers there are leaning on that same lesson with an accent.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: When money costs move, the asking price is not a wish list.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a claim you have to defend.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: The week ahead marks two dates.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Tuesday brings the Case Schiller National Price Index and July new home sales.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thursday through Saturday is Jackson Hole with Chair Warsh speaking Friday morning.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I say Warsh because my mom used to say it that way.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: She's going to Warsh clothes.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Warsh is going to speak Friday morning, the single event most likely to move your rate quote this month.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Recap three things.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Rates fell two straight weeks, heading into the biggest Fed stage of the year.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Santa Clarita sits at four months of inventory.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: The doorstep between a seller's market and a balanced one, and the sellers still winning are the ones priced right on day one.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Paid in 23 days, while the other half gives back 19 grand.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And distress is rising off a tiny base under 1% behind a wall of homeowner equity with the frozen pipeline is the thing to watch, not the headline foreclosure count.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow morning we'll run the fresh weekend numbers, every open house result that came on and what fell out and what day one of Jackson Hole Week does to rates.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bottom line for today nobody drowns owning money on a house worth more than the loan.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the Santa Clarita is nowhere near that line.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you want these numbers on your phone, instead of hunting for them, text the word house to 661 400 1720.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'll send you the update, and I'll see you tomorrow.