San Diego Housing: More Inventory, More Price Cuts, but 'Affordable' Remains a Stretch
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San Diego County's housing market is showing signs of differentiation after months of relentless tightening. Active for-sale inventory stood at 6,115 listings countywide in the most recent weekly count — down 81 from the prior week, so compression continues — with a median list price of $899,000. June closed sales carried a county median around $950,000, meaning list prices are now running below recent closing figures.
The most telling shift may be seller behavior: 53 percent of homes that closed escrow in June sold below their original list price, up three percentage points from May. Only 22 percent of June buyers paid all cash, suggesting the market is slowly becoming more accessible to conventional buyers, though at a $899,000 median, that accessibility remains sharply limited. Months of supply ticked down slightly to 3.04 — still well below the six-month threshold associated with a balanced market, but meaningfully less extreme than the 2.4 months recorded in the spring.
The range within the county is stark: the priciest recent sale was recorded in Rancho Santa Fe at $11.75 million, while the least expensive closed sale was a manufactured home at $110,000 — a 107-fold spread that captures how fractured the market is by geography and property type.
The broader economic backdrop offers mixed signals. County unemployment reached 4.4 percent in June, up from 3.9 percent in May, though the rise is largely attributed to seasonal factors including teachers going off summer payroll. WARN Act layoffs from ServiceNow, MedImpact, and Intrepid Studios are still rippling through the job market. And the county's public school enrollment has declined by roughly 33,000 students over eight years — a demographic trend driven in part by housing costs that feeds back into reduced school budgets and a shrinking population of families with children.