Santa Clara housing market
Third Quarter 2026

Santa Clara recorded sixteen single-family closings between July and September, one fewer than the same quarter last year. The homes that sold got full list price, up three points on last summer, and they reached contract in about five and a half weeks instead of eleven and a half. Then they closed in about ten weeks rather than four months. In a city this size, that is a clean quarter for any seller who priced right.

The median is the line most people will notice first. It came in about twenty-three percent below last summer, and the average fell about a third. I do not read that as Santa Clara homes losing nearly a quarter of their value in a year. Homes do not sell at full price in under six weeks in a market where values are sliding. The drop comes from which sixteen homes closed, and the next section shows how I can tell.

Here is the tell. Last summer the quarter's average sale price ran about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars above its median, because a few high-end sales pulled it up. Last September alone had four closings with an average over a million dollars. This summer the average and the median sat within about fourteen thousand dollars of each other. When those two lines nearly meet, the sample had very few homes at the top of the range. The middle of Santa Clara kept trading. Very little at the top closed this summer.

The rest of the year-over-year table points the same way. Dollar volume fell about thirty-nine percent on one fewer sale, which is a price-mix story, not a demand story. Supply grew, with new listings up about a quarter, the active count up about a third, and the under-contract count up about a fifth. Days to contract fell by about half, days to close by about forty percent, and the average active listing had been waiting about two months less than a year ago.

Buyers had more to look at this summer than last, with the quarter's active count about a third higher and new listings about a quarter higher. The homes that sold went fast and at full price, so the good ones did not wait for anybody. But the closings clustered in the middle of the city's price range, and that helps a buyer shopping there. There are recent comparable sales to lean on and more homes to choose between.

Above that range the picture is thinner. Few homes at the top closed this summer, so comparable sales up there are older and scarcer, and pricing those homes takes more judgment on both sides. The resort communities run on their own logic, since a nightly-rental property is valued partly on what it can earn. My Arcadia Resort and Paradise Village at Zion pages cover how those two pockets work.

The quarter charts above put this summer in the year. Through three quarters, the quarterly files show fifty single-family closings in Santa Clara in 2026 against fifty-one last year. The count is nearly identical. The timing inside the year was different: a busier first quarter than last year, a lighter spring, and a summer one sale short.

The median tells a less tidy story. In 2025 it dipped in the spring and jumped back in the summer. In 2026 it has stepped down each quarter, from the high six hundreds to the low six hundreds to the mid five hundreds. I would not call that a trend in value on sixteen to eighteen sales a quarter, and the speed and sale-to-list numbers argue against it. But I am watching it. If the fourth quarter prints low again with sellers still at full price, the honest read is that the city's closings have shifted toward the middle of the range, not that any given home is worth less.

The quarterly under-contract count is up about a fifth on last summer, and new listings are still arriving, so Santa Clara heads into fall with more going on than a year ago on both sides of the table. The heat is breaking, and this is when second-home shoppers and winter visitors start touring Washington County again. In a city with this little inventory, a few extra serious buyers can matter.

What I will be watching in the fourth quarter is whether the shelf keeps growing faster than the closings. This summer it did, and sellers still got full price, which means buyers kept up. If that changes, it will show up first as longer days on market, well before it shows up in a median. If you want to sell and buy in the same move this fall, the buy before you sell calculator lays out what it takes to do it in that order.

A quarterly report is the right place to start pricing a Santa Clara home and the wrong place to finish. Three months of closings smooths out the swings of any single month, which is why I point owners here first. But even a full quarter in this city is rarely more than a couple dozen sales, spread across custom hillside homes, older homes near the center of town, newer subdivisions, and resort properties. No one median fits all of those.

The pricing that holds up starts with the closings inside your own subdivision over the last few quarters, then adjusts for lot, view, condition, and whether the home carries nightly-rental rights. My what is my home worth in Santa Clara page gives you a first range, and a full home valuation narrows it to a number you can list at. If you are weighing a listing this fall against waiting for spring, the sell now or wait calculator puts both paths side by side.

Santa Clara looks like one market on a report like this, but it sells like several. The custom homes in The Hills at Santa Clara and at The Point at Snow Canyon trade on view and lot. The custom builds on large irrigated lots in the Vineyards price on lot and build quality, and the older homes near the historic center price on lot size and age. The nightly-rental properties price partly on what they can earn. When a quarter's closings lean toward one of those groups, the citywide median follows, whether or not anything changed in the others.

That is the practical reason to read this report and then go one level down. My Santa Clara neighborhoods guide breaks out each area, what it offers, and how it tends to price, so you can see which curve your home sits on before you compare it to anything.

A Santa Clara sale almost always comes with a second question: where do you land? Homes have been moving quickly here, so the sale can come together faster than the next home is ready. The order you do things in matters as much as the price you get.

If the next home is bigger, my moving up in Santa Clara guide covers how to time the two closings. If the next home is simpler to care for, the right-sizing in Santa Clara page walks through it. Building here usually means an individual lot and a custom or semi-custom builder, and my new construction in Santa Clara guide covers how that timeline works. When you are ready to list, my sell your Santa Clara home page explains how I take a home to market.