Where the Housing Market Stood in October 2023

This post first ran on October 25, 2023. Every number in this section is from that fall, so read it as a snapshot of a specific moment and not as a description of the market you are selling into today.

The California Association of REALTORS reported a statewide median price of $843,500 for September 2023 (a revised figure).[3] Orange County sat far above that, with a September 2023 median of $1,310,000.[3] The more telling numbers were about speed and supply. The statewide Unsold Inventory Index, which measures how many months it would take to sell every active listing at the current pace, was 2.8 months.[3] The median home sold in 18 days.[3]

Put those side by side and you get the odd market of late 2023. Borrowing was the most expensive it had been in years, and yet homes were still selling in under three weeks, because there were so few of them.

Low Inventory Was the Market Trend Working for Sellers

Scarcity sells. A buyer who has seen four houses in two months and lost two of them to other offers does not behave like a buyer with forty choices. They decide faster and forgive a dated kitchen.

That was the core argument of the original version of this post, and the data from that fall supports it. A 2.8 month supply of homes statewide in September 2023 is thin by any standard.[3] For comparison, a year later the same index had climbed to 3.6 months and active listings were up 36 percent year over year, which tells you how tight the 2023 starting point was.[3]

The first version of this post illustrated the shortage with the infographic below, built on Realtor.com listing counts that compared September 2023 active listings with the typical pre-pandemic years. I kept the image because it was part of the original article. When I updated the post I could not open the underlying Realtor.com data page to check the exact counts, so I have not repeated them in the text. The C.A.R. figures above make the same point from a source I could read.

Low inventory does not help every seller equally. It helps the one whose house is in move-in condition and priced where the comps say it should be. A house that is overpriced in a tight market still sits, it just sits with fewer neighbors.

What the NAR Confidence Index Showed About Speed and Multiple Offers

The original post leaned on the National Association of REALTORS Confidence Index, a monthly survey of member agents about the deals they closed. The September 2023 report, published October 19, 2023, backs up both figures we quoted.[1]

• 69 percent of homes sold that month had been on the market for less than one month.[1]
• Homes that sold received an average of 2.6 offers.[1]

What the first version did not mention is the direction. Both numbers were lower than the month before, and so was the share of homes selling above list price.[1]

All figures in the table come from the September 2023 report.[1] Only 8 percent of the agents surveyed expected buyer traffic to rise over the following three months compared with a year earlier.[1]

So the honest reading of fall 2023 is this. It was still a seller’s market, and it was cooling at the edges. Bidding wars were less frequent than in the summer, and buyers who financed were being squeezed while cash buyers took a larger share. In Newport Beach and Corona del Mar, where cash is common at the top of the market, that shift mattered less. In entry level condos in Santa Ana or Garden Grove, where first-time buyers carry the market, it mattered a lot.

Mortgage Rates Near 8 Percent: The Other Side of the 2023 Market

Every seller in October 2023 was really selling to a buyer’s monthly payment. That payment was climbing week by week.

These are Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey averages.[2] The day after this post was published, the 30-year average reached 7.79 percent, and it stayed above 7.5 percent into early November before easing to 7.22 percent by November 30.[2]

For an Orange County seller this created a narrow window. Buyers who were already approved were racing to lock before rates rose again, which kept the offers coming on well priced homes. Buyers who were stretching at 7 percent simply dropped out. The seller’s job was to price for the buyer who was still standing, and that buyer had a hard ceiling on the payment.

I told sellers the same thing at the time, and I still believe it was right. If your house only works at a price that needs a 6 percent buyer, you are listing for a buyer who does not exist this month.

How to Capitalize on Market Trends When Selling Your Home

The original advice was short: work with a local agent and price the house right. Both still hold. Here is what that looked like in practice in a market with little supply and expensive money, and most of it applies in any market.

1. Price to the last 90 days, not the last peak. Comps from the spring are already stale when rates move a full point. Start from recent closed sales in your own tract, then adjust for pending sales, which tell you where buyers are right now.
2. Be ready on day one. In a market where most homes sold within a month, the first two weekends were the whole show. Photos and disclosures should be finished before the sign goes up. Our guide to upgrades that add value before you sell covers what is worth doing first.
3. Know your net before you list. Run a net sheet with your payoff demand, commissions, transfer tax and escrow costs so you know which offer actually leaves you more money. See how much it costs to sell a house in Orange County.
4. Read offers beyond the price line. With 2.6 offers on the average sale, a seller often chose between a higher number with a financing contingency and a lower one with cash.[1] The cleaner offer won more often than people expected.
5. Plan the next move before you accept. Selling into a tight market means buying in one too. If you need to replace the house, read buying and selling a home at the same time before you sign anything.

None of this is glamorous. The sellers who did well in late 2023 were the ones who got the price right in the first week, because a listing that sits in a fast market starts to look like it has a problem.

Negotiation still mattered

Multiple offers do not negotiate themselves. Deciding whether to counter one buyer or all of them, and handling the appraisal gap on a financed offer, are where a seller gains or loses real money. I wrote about this in more detail in how to sell your house for the most money.

What Has Changed Since: Orange County Market Trends in Late 2026

Three years on, the picture is different, and a seller reading the 2023 version of this post should not assume the same conditions.

C.A.R.’s September 2026 report put the Orange County median at $1,480,000, up 5.6 percent from $1,401,250 a year earlier, while county sales were down 2.0 percent from September 2025.[4] Statewide, sales ran at an annualized pace of 260,410 homes, and C.A.R. noted that sales had stayed below 300,000 units for the 48th consecutive month.[4] Active listings were up 0.5 percent year over year, and the report attributed the increase mainly to the slowdown in sales rather than a wave of new listings.[4]

Rates have not come back down to where buyers hoped. Freddie Mac’s survey for the week of October 22, 2026 put the 30-year fixed at 7.32 percent, up from 6.19 percent a year earlier.[5] That is lower than the 7.79 percent peak of late October 2023, but it is still well above the range that would release a flood of new buyers.[2][5]

For the month by month picture, see our Orange County housing market report for August 2026.

My Take for Orange County Sellers Reading This Today

I would not wait for the 2023 market to come back. It was a product of a very specific moment, when supply had collapsed faster than demand.

What carries over is the habit. Read the current numbers for your city, not the national headline, and price for the buyer who is actually out there this month. A four bedroom in Mission Viejo and a bluff top house in Laguna Beach do not share a market, even when the county median moves in one direction.

If you want to know where your own house sits before you decide anything, start with a real valuation. Our guide to what your Orange County home is worth in 2026 explains how I build one, and why the online estimate is usually the wrong place to start.

Some sellers are better off waiting. Most of the ones who tell me they are waiting for rates have not run the numbers on what another year of carrying costs does to their net.