Details
Every California housing headline quotes a median price. Almost none of them say what the number measures, which county mix it covers, or how old it is. Here is the source most of them are drawing on.
The C.A.R. county data set
The California Association of REALTORS® publishes county-level sales and price statistics drawn from a survey of more than 90 associations of REALTORS® across the state.
What it carries:
- Median sold prices for existing single-family homes and for condos/townhomes, by county
- Sales volume — the number of transactions, by region and county
- Price change, month-over-month and year-over-year
- Sales activity change against prior months and years
Historical series and city-level statistics are available through interactive dashboards, and the data downloads as Excel and PDF.
It is existing homes, not all homes
The headline series covers existing single-family detached homes. New construction is not the same series. A market where new builds dominate will look different in this data than it feels on the ground.
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The number is always at least three weeks old
Statistics are updated with last month’s data by the third week of the current month. So a figure published in the third week of any month describes the month before. A “current” median price is never current — it is a rear-view number, and in a fast-moving market that gap matters.
Median is not average, and it is not your house
A median is the midpoint of what sold. It moves when the mix of what sold changes, not only when values change. A quarter with more high-end sales lifts the median without any individual home gaining value. Read a rising median as “more expensive homes sold” until you have evidence it is “homes became more expensive.”
What it will not tell you
Months of supply is not part of this data set. Neither is anything about your specific property — for that, the assessed value your county assessor holds is a different number again, governed by Proposition 13’s rules rather than by the market.
Publication schedule and coverage per C.A.R. Verified 25 August 2026.