San Diego's Housing Market Holds Year-Over-Year Gains Even as Monthly Prices Soften
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San Diego County's median home sale price stood at approximately $952,313 as of current Redfin tracking, representing a 3.9 percent increase year over year. That headline figure, however, sits alongside a string of monthly price declines from a June peak — meaning the year-over-year comparison still reads positive while the near-term trend has been softening, a split that tells different stories depending on whether a buyer or seller is doing the reading.
The office market offered its own mixed signals. Vacancy reached 13.4 percent in the second quarter of 2026, up 40 basis points year over year. Yet year-to-date office sales reached 3.2 million square feet, a 34 percent increase from the same period last year — suggesting that transactional activity is rising even as overall vacancy remains elevated. Life sciences vacancy ran even higher at approximately 26 percent, with the Eastgate submarket near UCSD continuing to be identified as a relative bright spot.
County unemployment ticked up to 4.4 percent in June, with ServiceNow's announcement of 63 layoffs effective August 17th at its Eastgate Mall office among the most recent WARN Act filings contributing to that figure. The county's economy remains structurally concentrated in healthcare, defense, and biotech, though mid-level technology and professional services jobs are absorbing real pressure.
On the affordable housing front, the city has moved on several fronts simultaneously: a $500 million Affordable Housing Trust Fund established this summer, an $8.5 million City Council allocation for affordable housing preservation, and last week's groundbreaking on a 223-unit Zephyr project in Old Town. Each represents an attempt to address a housing shortage that local policy helped create over decades.