Should You Buy a Home in Orange County Now or Wait Until 2027?

I keep hearing the exact same sentence from Orange County buyers right now: “I think I’m just going to wait until next year.” And every time I hear it, my immediate question is, what exactly are you waiting for? How did you you come to this conclusion? Have you even explored what you can and cannot afford now or in the future when you do plan to buy!

Are you waiting for interest rates to come down? Home prices to drop? More inventory to hit the market? Are you actually just afraid to buy a home? Waiting for the economy to feel more stable? Another year to save for a larger down payment? Most buyers I talk to are waiting for some combination of all of those things, and that is where I think people are getting stuck. They are assuming that next year interest rates will be lower, home prices will be lower, there will be more homes for sale, the economy will feel safer and they will have more money saved. Could some of those things happen? Absolutely. But expecting all of them to happen at the same time is a pretty big bet.

The biggest fear I hear from Orange County home buyers is that they will buy a house today and somehow discover next year that they overpaid. That fear is completely understandable. When you are talking about spending $1 million, $1.5 million or $2 million on a home, nobody wants to feel like they made the wrong decision. But trying to perfectly time the bottom of the real estate market is where buyers can become completely paralyzed.

The Orange County housing market is also much more complicated than the headlines make it sound. There is no single “Orange County market.” Newport Beach behaves very differently from North Tustin. North Tustin behaves differently from Anaheim Hills, Villa Park, Yorba Linda and Orange. Even two neighborhoods within the same city can have completely different levels of demand.

As of the most recent 2026 market data, Orange County home prices overall were still higher than they were a year ago, even though buyers have more inventory and homes are taking longer to sell. That combination is exactly why I think this market is so interesting for buyers. Prices have not suddenly collapsed, but buyers have more negotiating power than they had when every home had ten offers the first weekend.

• ​North Tustin, the median sale price was approximately $1.85 million, up around 8% from the previous year. 
• Orange, the median sale price was around $1.25 million, with year-over-year gains of roughly 10% on the recent data. 
• Villa Park also showed strong year-over-year pricing, although it is such a small market that individual high-end sales can move the median dramatically. 
• Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills were much flatter, which can actually be a really good environment for buyers because prices are not running away while sellers may still be willing to negotiate.

Then you have Newport Beach, where recent year-over-year pricing was actually down slightly. I think that is important to talk about because I am not going to tell buyers that every market always goes up. It doesn’t. Newport Beach has had more inventory, longer market times and some sellers who are much more willing to negotiate than they were a few years ago. For a buyer, that can be an opportunity rather than something to fear.

This is where I think buyers are making the Biggest Mistake!! They are looking at a slower market and thinking, “I should wait.” I look at a slower market and think, “Where can we negotiate?”

When everyone feels confident about real estate, sellers usually feel confident too. When interest rates are lower, buyer demand often increases. More buyers compete for the same homes, sellers become less flexible and suddenly you are back in multiple-offer situations. You may get the lower mortgage rate you were waiting for, but now you are paying more for the house and competing against five other buyers.

Right now, the opportunity is not that Orange County homes have suddenly become cheap. Orange County is expensive and likely always will be compared with most of the country. The opportunity is that some sellers are willing to negotiate.

That negotiation can come in many different forms:

• It might be a lower purchase price. 
• It could be seller-paid closing costs. 
• It could be a credit toward repairs. 
• It could be a seller contribution that your lender uses toward an interest-rate buydown, depending on your financing and loan guidelines. 

Sometimes the difference between a buyer thinking a home is completely unaffordable and realizing it might actually work is simply understanding how the deal can be structured.

That is one of the biggest things I have learned working with buyers in this market. Every single buyer I have helped has been surprised by what they could actually afford and what kind of home they could realistically buy. In many cases, the house they originally thought was completely out of reach ended up becoming possible because we negotiated the right terms.

I have also had sellers contribute toward my buyers’ goal of homeownership over and over again. That does not mean every seller will give you everything you ask for, and it does not mean every property is a deal. It means we look for the properties where the seller has a reason to negotiate and working with the right realtor, like myself can help you navigate this effectively!

Maybe the home has been sitting for 60 or 90 days. Maybe the seller already bought another property. Maybe they need to relocate. Maybe they listed too high and have already reduced the price several times. Maybe a previous buyer fell out of escrow. Maybe the home needs work. Those are the situations where having market knowledge becomes incredibly valuable.

A buyer might look at a $1.5 million home online and immediately decide it is too expensive. My first thought is not necessarily, “Can you afford $1.5 million?” My first question is, “What would this seller actually accept?”

There is a huge difference between the list price and the deal we may ultimately be able to create.

This is also why I think buyers who say, “I’ll just save another $50,000 and buy next year,” need to look at the full picture. Saving more money is obviously a great thing. But if the type of home you want increases by $75,000 during that same period, you have technically saved more money while losing purchasing power.

That has already happened in parts of Orange County. Buyers who waited in North Tustin or Orange because they expected prices to fall did not necessarily see that happen. Meanwhile, buyers looking in areas like Newport Beach may currently have more leverage because the market there has softened.

There is no blanket answer.

That is exactly why saying, “I’ll wait until next year,” without first looking at the numbers can be such an expensive decision.

The same thing applies to interest rates. I completely understand wanting a lower rate. Nobody is excited about paying more interest. But the rate is only one part of the equation. The purchase price matters. Seller credits matter. Your down payment matters. Property taxes matter. HOA fees matter. Insurance matters. The amount of competition for the house matters.

I recently helped a buyer significantly reduce their monthly mortgage cost because we were able to negotiate seller credits and a lower purchase price. That is the type of opportunity buyers miss when they focus only on the advertised interest rate.

The economy is another major reason buyers tell me they want to wait. They want things to feel more stable before making such a large financial commitment. Again, I completely understand that. But the economy rarely sends out an announcement saying, “Everything is safe now. This is the perfect time to buy a house.”

There will always be uncertainty. Interest rates will change. Elections happen. Markets move. Companies hire and lay people off. Inflation rises and falls. The goal is not to eliminate every possible risk. The goal is to understand your own financial situation and make an informed decision.

And that is really the point I want Orange County buyers to understand. I am not saying everyone should buy a house right now. If your income is unstable, you do not have enough reserves, you are planning to move soon or buying would stretch you financially, then waiting may absolutely be the right choice.

But I do not want someone to wait because they assume they cannot afford a home when nobody has actually shown them what they can afford. I do not want them to assume the seller will not negotiate. I do not want them to assume they need 20% down. I do not want them to assume they cannot ask for closing costs. And I definitely do not want someone sitting on the sidelines for another year simply because they believe that somehow everything will magically become cheaper at the same time.

The buyers who have been most successful in this market are the ones willing to look at the opportunities other buyers are ignoring. While other buyers are waiting for the perfect market, we are looking for the motivated seller. While other buyers are focused on the asking price, we are figuring out what the seller may actually accept. While other buyers assume a home is unaffordable, we are running the numbers.

That knowledge is incredibly powerful.

If homeownership is something you want in your future, you do not have to buy tomorrow. But before you automatically decide to wait until 2027, find out what is actually possible today. You may be surprised by how much home you can afford, how much negotiating power you have and how creative we can get with the right seller.

Because sometimes the best opportunity in real estate happens when everyone else is too afraid to take advantage of it.

If you are thinking about buying a home in Newport Beach, North Tustin, Anaheim Hills, Villa Park, Yorba Linda, Orange or anywhere else in Orange County, reach out and tell me what you are looking for. I can help you understand what is realistically within reach, what the monthly numbers might look like and, most importantly, where I think we have room to negotiate.