Every few months someone asks me what the Santa Monica market is doing. My answer is always the same: which Santa Monica market are you asking about?
Because there isn’t one. There are four. They share a zip code, a coastline, and a school district. Beyond that, they operate on completely different rules — different timelines, different power dynamics, different strategies for buyers and sellers. Treating them as a single market is one of the most common and costly mistakes I see on the Westside.
I pulled a full year of CLAW MLS data for Santa Monica single family homes — April 2025 through April 2026. 344 closed sales. $1.6 billion in total volume. I also pulled the complete failed listing record — every property that was withdrawn, canceled, or expired without selling over the same period. That second dataset changes the story in ways worth understanding.
Here is what the data actually says.
THE HEADLINE NUMBER — AND WHY IT MISLEADS
Santa Monica sellers averaged 100.33% of their list price across 344 transactions over the past twelve months. That sounds like a perfectly balanced market. Buyers and sellers meeting in the middle. A handshake and a sold sign.
It isn’t.
That average is obscuring one of the most dramatic variance stories on the entire Westside. The best-positioned homes sold at 118–139% of list price. The worst-positioned homes sold at 57–58% of list price. Same city. Same year. A gap of more than 80 percentage points between the best and worst outcomes.
The difference was almost never the house. It was almost always the pricing strategy.
Understanding which tier your property or search falls into — and what the rules of engagement are in that tier specifically — is the difference between those two outcomes. Here is what the data shows.
THE OTHER HALF OF THE STORY: 201 LISTINGS THAT DIDN’T SELL
Before the tier breakdown, a number that rarely gets discussed: 201 Santa Monica single family homes were withdrawn, canceled, or expired without selling over the past twelve months.
344 sold. 201 failed. That means roughly one in every three listings in Santa Monica did not result in a sale.
This is not random. The failed listings tell a precise story about where the market draws its line.
The median list price of failed Santa Monica listings across the year ran consistently between $4,242,500 and $4,995,000 depending on the period. The median sold price across the same periods ranged from $3,027,227 to $4,380,000. The gap between where sellers wanted to be and where buyers were willing to transact ran between $750,000 and $1.5 million at the median — consistently, across every period measured.
The repeat offenders are the most instructive part of the dataset. Several properties appear two, three, and four times in the failed listing record — relisted at slightly different prices, pulling slightly different crowds, and ultimately arriving at the same conclusion the market had communicated from day one.
One home in the Montana neighborhood was listed four separate times over eight months at prices ranging from $6,795,000 to $8,995,000. Every attempt failed. It ultimately sold at $6,700,000 — the lowest price it had ever been listed at, and the price the market had been pointing toward since the first day it hit the MLS. The seller spent eight months and four listing cycles discovering what a single accurate comp analysis would have shown in week one.
A property near Palisades Beach Road was listed, expired, and relisted — and as of this writing remains active at $34,950,000. It has been on the market in various forms for over a year.
Several properties in the under-$3M range appear two and three times in the failed list — the same address, slightly reduced price, same result. The market in this tier moves fast and has no patience for overpricing at any level.
The failed listing data confirms what the sold data implies: Santa Monica rewards precision and punishes hope-based pricing at every tier, in every neighborhood, at every price point. The 201 sellers who didn’t close were not unlucky. They were mispriced.
THE FOUR TIERS — WHERE TRANSACTIONS ACTUALLY HAPPEN
TIER ONE: UNDER $2.5M Sunset Park and surrounding neighborhoods
The short version: You are not negotiating. You are competing.
Homes under $2.5M in Santa Monica are the most aggressively competitive tier on the corridor. Over the past twelve months, multiple sales in this range closed at 127–139% of list price — not as isolated wins on exceptional properties, but as a repeating pattern across multiple neighborhoods and price points.
A home in Sunset Park sold at 138% of list price. Another in Sunset Park sold at 127%. A third sold at 129%. These are results from the past 90 days alone, not cherry-picked highlights from the hottest month of the year.
The absorption data confirms it. The current three-month absorption rate for Santa Monica is 13.33 sales per month. Months of housing supply sits at 5.18 — a seller’s market by any standard definition. The median days on market for sold properties across all of Santa Monica is 14 days, and entry-level homes are pulling that number down, not up.
The failed listing record adds important context at this tier. Multiple properties in the under-$2.5M range appear two and three times in the canceled and expired data — same address, marginally reduced prices, same outcome. Even in the most competitive tier on the corridor, overpricing generates failure. The market here moves fast, but it does not move blindly.
What this means for sellers:
If your home is correctly priced under $2.5M in Santa Monica, you should expect multiple offers within the first two weeks. The market is doing the heavy lifting. Your primary job is to price it accurately and resist the temptation to reach — because the market will find the right number faster than you will, and reaching costs you momentum you cannot get back.
What this means for buyers:
There is no negotiating room in this tier. Offers at list price are losing offers. The data supports coming in 5–15% above asking on well-positioned homes, with as few contingencies as your financial situation allows. The strategy is simple and difficult in equal measure: know your number before you walk in, come in strong on day one, and move fast. The window in this tier is measured in hours, not days.
TIER TWO: $2.5M TO $5M Sunset Park, Ocean Park, and the entry to the Montana neighborhood
The short version: The most transactions, the most nuance, and the most important data story in the market right now.
This is the engine of Santa Monica real estate. By transaction count, this tier generated more closed sales over the past twelve months than all other tiers combined.
The current three-month median sold price for Santa Monica sits at $3,027,227. That is down from $3,738,000 in the prior four to six months and $4,380,000 in the six months before that. Every time I share that number in a client conversation, someone reads it as a price decline.
It is not a price decline.
Price per square foot has held steady throughout the twelve-month period. What has changed is the compositional mix of what is transacting — more sales are closing in the lower half of this tier than in prior periods. That is a completely different story from falling prices, and conflating the two leads to bad decisions on both sides of a transaction.
The sales results in this tier confirm the market is healthy for correctly priced properties. A home in Sunset Park listed just under $3M sold at $3,450,000 — 115% of list in 9 days. A home at the entry to the Montana neighborhood listed at $4,995,000 sold at $5,500,000 — 110% of list in 17 days. Another home in the same area listed just under $5M sold at $5,665,000 — 113% of list in 22 days.
The failed listing record in this tier is where the real education lives. Several properties in the $3M to $5M range appear in the canceled data two, three, and four times across the twelve-month period. One home near Beverley Avenue was canceled four separate times at prices between $4,469,000 and $4,499,000 before disappearing from the market entirely. Another on Mabery Road was canceled twice before finally going pending. A home near Rustic Road was canceled twice, expired once, and relisted — spending the better part of a year looking for a buyer at prices the market consistently rejected.
The twelve-month data also shows the relationship between original list price and final outcome with precision. Homes that launched correctly and sold in the first 30 days averaged 103.88% of list price. Homes that took 91 to 120 days averaged 92.49% of list price. The longer a home sits in this tier, the more negotiating leverage shifts to the buyer — and it shifts decisively.
What this means for sellers:
The window is open in this tier right now. Correctly priced homes are seeing above-ask offers. The gap between a well-priced listing and an aspirationally priced one is not measured in days on market — it is measured in whether you sell at all, and at what percentage of your original ask. Price to the data, not to what you hope the data will become.
What this means for buyers:
Expect genuine competition on anything priced correctly. Move with purpose on homes that have been on market fewer than 30 days and are priced at or below the comparable sales. Homes that have been sitting 60 days or more deserve a second look and a harder negotiation — some represent real value, and sellers at that stage are often more motivated than their original list price suggested. The failed listing data shows that many of these homes have been on market in various forms for months or years. That history is leverage.
TIER THREE: $5M TO $10M The Montana neighborhood and surrounding corridors
The short version: Disciplined sellers win decisively. Aspirational sellers wait a very long time and then lose anyway.
No tier in the Santa Monica market shows a wider variance between the best and worst outcomes — and no tier makes the cause of that variance more obvious.
Track one: homes that launched at market price.
A home in the Montana neighborhood listed at $5,195,000 and sold at $6,450,000 — 124% of list in 7 days. A home in the Montana neighborhood listed at $8,485,000 and sold at $10,050,000 — 118% of list in 3 days. A home in the Montana neighborhood listed at $5,195,000 and sold at $5,800,000 — 111% of list in 11 days.
Track two: homes that launched above market.
A home in the Montana neighborhood listed at $7,995,000 and sold at $4,600,000 — 57% of list after 152 days. Another home in the Montana neighborhood at the same list price sold at 58% of list after a similarly extended market exposure.
The failed listing record in this tier tells an equally sharp story. A home near Georgina Avenue was listed twice at $11,495,000 and $11,499,000 across separate attempts — neither succeeded. A home on 20th Street was listed and canceled four separate times at prices ranging from $6,795,000 to $8,995,000, finally selling at $6,700,000 — the number the market had been signaling from the beginning. A home near Yale Street was listed and canceled twice at $6,550,000 without finding a buyer.
The pattern across the failed listings in this tier is consistent: sellers who priced above the comparable sales spent months generating showings that produced no offers, burned their buyer pool, and ultimately sold for less — in many cases significantly less — than they would have achieved with accurate pricing at launch.
The buyers in this tier are sophisticated, well-advised, and extremely well informed. They know the comparable sales. They know the days on market. They know when a seller has run out of options. They will not overpay for a mispriced home. They will simply wait.
What this means for sellers:
The spread between a correctly priced home and an aspirationally priced one in this tier is not 5% or 10%. The data shows it can be 40% or more. Pricing strategy in this tier is not one factor among many. It is the entire game.
What this means for buyers:
Real value exists in this tier among homes that have been sitting. The data clearly supports a more aggressive opening position than the lower tiers — and sellers who have been on market 60 days or more have usually received the market’s message and are ready to have a genuine negotiation. The failed listing record shows you exactly which homes have been through multiple cycles. That information is publicly available and is your most powerful negotiating tool.
TIER FOUR: $10M AND ABOVE The Montana neighborhood, the Riviera section, and the San Vicente corridor
The short version: A market within a market. Fewer transactions, longer timelines, and a predictable negotiating range that functions almost like a benchmark.
Luxury Santa Monica operates on its own clock, and the twelve-month data makes that clock readable.
Buyers in this tier paid consistently in the 88–93% of list price range across the year, and they took their time getting there. A home in the Montana neighborhood sold at 92% of list after 37 days. A home in the Riviera section of Montana sold at 91% of list after 87 days. A home on the San Vicente corridor sold at 91% of list after 271 days.
The failed listing record in this tier is the most dramatic in the entire dataset. Five properties above $17M failed to sell over the twelve-month period. Combined asking price: approximately $130 million. Combined sales: zero.
A property near Palisades Beach Road was listed at $19,000,000, expired after 157 days, and relisted. The combined version of the property was listed at $34,950,000, expired, and relisted again — currently active. A property on Georgina Avenue was listed at $17,995,000 and expired after 100 days. A property on San Vicente Boulevard was withdrawn after 359 days at $59,950,000.
The ultra-luxury tier in Santa Monica is not a market for speculative pricing. The buyers who operate at this level have access to the same data you are reading right now, and significantly more resources to act on it patiently. Properties that launch above the comparable sales in this tier do not generate competitive bidding. They generate polite curiosity and then silence.
What this means for sellers:
Price to the comparable sales from the start. The twelve-month record shows clearly that luxury buyers in Santa Monica will negotiate 7–12% off list as a baseline expectation. Homes priced above the comp set are not attracting higher offers — they are generating the extended days on market, the price reductions, and in many cases the outright failures that are visible throughout the failed listing record.
What this means for buyers:
You have negotiating leverage in this tier that simply does not exist below $5M. The data supports opening offers in the 88–93% range on correctly priced homes as a reasonable starting position. On homes that have been on market more than 60 days or that have experienced price reductions or multiple listing cycles, the data supports going further. The failed listing record is your roadmap. Use it.
THE FULL PICTURE: 12 MONTHS IN SANTA MONICA
344 homes sold. 201 failed to sell. $1.6 billion in total volume. Median sold price of $3,900,000. Average days on market for sold properties: 14 days. Overall list-to-sale ratio: 100.33%.
The complete dataset — both the sold record and the failed listing record — tells a single coherent story. Santa Monica is a market of extraordinary precision. Correctly priced homes across all four tiers are finding buyers quickly and often above asking price. Mispriced homes are generating showings without offers, burning days on market, losing negotiating leverage, and in many cases cycling through multiple failed listing attempts before either selling far below their original ask or disappearing from the market entirely.
The four tiers are not just price bands. They are four different sets of rules, four different timelines, and four different strategies. Knowing which one you are operating in — and what both the sold data and the failed listing data say about how to play it — is the difference between the outcomes at the top of this report and the ones at the bottom.
If you want to know specifically where your situation sits in this data — as a buyer, a seller, or someone still deciding — I am happy to walk through it with you directly. That conversation is free, it takes about twenty minutes, and it will tell you more about your specific position in this market than any open house or Zillow estimate ever will.
Reply to this post or contact Greg directly to schedule a Quiet Briefing.
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Greg Dahl · Coldwell Banker Realty · DRE 012133454 Brentwood · Santa Monica · Pacific Palisades · Malibu 310.963.9689 · greg.dahl@cbrealty.com · dahlrealtors.com
This post was produced with the assistance of Claude, an AI tool made by Anthropic. I use it the same way a musician uses a great recording studio — the performance is mine, the tools make it sound better. The market data, the analysis, the relationships, and the judgment behind every word are always mine.
— Greg