The Inland Empire Seller’s Market Report

The newest county price figures are still August’s — C.A.R. had not published September’s when this issue went out — and August didn’t bring a price drop. It brought the end of price growth. The Inland Empire median sold price was $600,000, unchanged from July and, for the first time this year, unchanged from a year ago as well. Underneath that flat number, the pace of a sale kept slipping: the typical home took 39 days to go under contract, up from 37 in July; supply climbed from 4.1 to 4.5 months; and sales ran 8.4% below last August.

The September listing data fills in what happened next, and it’s mixed. Active listings across the metro ticked up to about 13,206 — and the cushion we pointed to last month is gone: inventory is now level with last September, not below it. The typical active listing has been sitting 64 days, up from 63 in August. On the other side, 4,016 listings cut their price in September, a little fewer than August’s 2026 high of 4,176, though still about 3% more than last September. So no flood of inventory, but no relief either — buyers simply have more of a choice than they did a year ago.

The two counties swapped places in August, which is a good reason not to read any single month too hard. Riverside County’s median fell 2.5% in a month to $632,990, still 1.3% above last August, on 5.9% fewer sales. San Bernardino County went the other way: up 7.0% in a single month to $522,370 and 4.2% ahead of last year — but on 9.3% fewer sales, with supply jumping from 4.5 to 5.4 months. A median that moves that far on that few sales is usually telling you which homes happened to sell, not that every home gained 7%. We wouldn’t price your house off that number, and you shouldn’t either.

What matters more for a seller is the cost of waiting, and that went up sharply this month. Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed at 7.40% the week of October 15 — unchanged from the week before, but up from 6.95% in mid-September and 6.27% a year ago. Every step up thins the pool of buyers who can afford your house. If your house needs work, or you need a closing date you can count on, you’re competing for a smaller, choosier buyer pool against move-in-ready listings that are themselves sitting longer. Homes that don’t show well are the ones that sit, and sitting is the one thing a seller on a timeline can’t absorb.

This is the market where a straightforward cash sale gets more attractive relative to listing: no repairs, no staging against listings that are already sitting, no price-cut chase, and a closing date you set — in as little as 7 days, or later, on your timeline. Not because listing is wrong — for a turnkey home with time to spare, it may still net you more, and we’ll tell you so — but because certainty is worth more in a flat market than it is in a rising one.