San Diego is running two markets at once — and only one of them is tight.

Every spring someone asks me whether the market is "good." It is the wrong question, and this year it is more wrong than usual — because San Diego is currently running two markets that are moving in opposite directions.

If you own a detached house, you are in a tight market with real leverage. If you own a condo, you are not. Same county, same month, completely different strategy.

The split, in numbers

Here is the June 2026 San Diego market data, broken out by product type instead of blended into one headline.

Read that table twice. Detached inventory fell by more than a quarter while closed sales rose almost 11%. Fewer houses, more buyers closing on them. That is the textbook definition of a tightening market.

Now the condo column. Inventory up slightly. Days on market up 10%. Prices up barely more than 1%. Buyers there have choices and time.

The countywide headline — median $950,000, up 4.4%, 36 days on market — is the average of these two. It is a real number that describes neither of the markets it is made from.

What months of supply actually measures

Months of supply answers one question: at the current pace of sales, how long would it take to sell every home currently listed?

You divide active listings by monthly closings. Detached: 3,047 active against 1,434 closings is about 2.1 — reported at 2.4 using a trailing average. Either way, well under three months.

The reason I care about this more than median price is that median price is a lagging indicator. Those deals were negotiated 30 to 60 days before they closed. Months of supply tells you what buyers are able to do today.

Why detached tightened

Not because demand exploded. Because supply stopped arriving.

New detached listings fell 17.8% year over year. Countywide new listings were down 13.9%. The rate lock-in effect is still doing its work: homeowners holding sub-4% mortgages from 2020 and 2021 are reluctant to trade them for a current-market rate, so they stay put.

Meanwhile closed sales rose. Buyers who had been waiting on the sidelines for lower rates eventually stopped waiting. You end up with more buyers competing over a shrinking pool of houses.

North County shows the same pattern — inventory declined year over year, leaving about 2.9 months of supply, with median prices up roughly 6.5% and new listings down.

If you're selling a detached home

You have leverage. Use it correctly, which does not mean overpricing.

• Price at comps, not above them. A 99.1% sale-to-list ratio means the typical house is closing just under asking. Homes are not routinely bidding over list countywide, so pricing above comps and waiting for a frenzy is still the most common way to stall a listing.
• Your first two weeks still decide it. Even in a tight market, the burst of attention when a listing goes live is the largest audience it will ever have. At 32 median days, a home that hasn't moved in three weeks is already an outlier.
• Don't over-improve. With supply this thin, buyers are accepting condition compromises they wouldn't in a loose market. Fix the systems, skip the cosmetic renovation.
• Line up your next move first. The same shortage that helps you sell will work against you as a buyer. If you're staying in San Diego, plan the purchase before you list.

If you're selling a condo

Different job entirely. At 4.0 months of supply with days on market rising, you are competing for a buyer who has options.

• Price honestly on day one. At 97.5% sale-to-list and 43 days, there is no frenzy to catch up to a hopeful number. Overpricing here costs months.
• Get ahead of the HOA questions. Reserve funding, SB-326 inspection status, and any pending assessment will all come up. Put them in the pre-offer package rather than defending them in escrow — the full playbook is here.
• Confirm your building is financeable. If lenders have flagged the project, your buyer pool shrinks to cash. Find out before you list, not during escrow.
• Presentation matters more. When a buyer has four comparable units to choose from, the one that shows best wins. This is where staging and photography actually pay.

What I actually tell sellers

Four things, in this order.

• Find your own product type's numbers before you fall in love with a price. The countywide median is the average of two different markets and is close to useless for pricing a specific home.
• Then go one level narrower. Neighborhood matters as much as product type — University City has been running around 24 days while Carmel Valley sits closer to 48. Same county, same month.
• Treat the first fourteen days as the whole ballgame. Photography, staging, pricing, and timing all need to be right on day one. There is no meaningful second launch.
• Decide your concession strategy before you get an offer. With payments still the binding constraint for most buyers, a rate buydown or closing-cost credit often moves a deal further than the same dollars off the price — and unlike a price cut, it doesn't reset the comp for your whole neighborhood.

The one-sentence version: if you own a house, this is a good moment and the main risk is overpricing into it. If you own a condo, it is a workable moment that will punish you for guessing.

If you want to know which numbers actually apply to your home, book thirty minutes. I'll pull your product type and your neighborhood — not the county headline — and give you an honest read, including if the honest read is "wait."