For two years people kept asking whether the luxury market was about to crash or take off again. Six months into 2026, we'd say neither. Prices have gone flat at a high level, a plateau, and what's holding them up is mostly that there isn't much to buy. Nationally, homes at $700k and above sold for a little more than a year ago. Fewer of them sold, or about the same number, and buyers took longer to decide. Here's where things stand at mid-year, for buyers, sellers and anyone just keeping an eye on it.

Our editorial desk pulled these figures from the public data listed under Sources and method at the end of this report, plus county recorder filings and multiple-listing data from major US metros. They show how the market is behaving. They aren't an appraisal of any one house.

The headline

  • Median sale price, homes at $700k and above: up roughly 4% year over year through June.
  • Closed sales in the segment: about flat to down low single digits compared with H1 2025.
  • Median days on market: near 50 days, up from the low 40s a year earlier.
  • Months of supply above $700k: still tight at around 3.5 months nationally. By the textbook, that's a seller's market, though it's a lot looser than 2021-2022 was.
  • Cash share: high. A lot of high-end deals still close without a mortgage, so rate moves don't hit the top of the market very hard.

Put simply, prices are up because so few people want to sell. Most owners have a mortgage rate well below today's, so why would they move? It isn't because a crowd of new buyers showed up. When a well-priced house that's ready to move into does list, it still goes fast. The rest sit.

What's driving it

People still won't give up their low rates. The 30-year fixed spent the first half in the mid-6% range, and the "golden handcuffs" are still on. If you've got a 3% mortgage, you don't want a 6.5% one, so not many resale homes come up. At the very top most buyers pay cash, so it matters less there. It matters a lot in the $700k-$1.5M band, where move-up buyers need to sell first.

Portfolios are carrying this market. Stocks and other investments were near record highs going into the summer, and buyers at this level spend from those, not from their salaries. That's the main reason luxury homes held up better than starter homes, where affordability is still brutal.

Builders filled some of the gap. They put up a lot of high-end homes, and in the Sun Belt metros where they built the most, the incentives on those new homes kept resale prices from climbing. If there's a lot of building near you, you've got less room to push your price as a seller.

What's selling and what isn't

What we saw earlier in resort towns like Aspen is happening everywhere now. Buyers are paying for houses that are finished and have features that are hard to come by, and they care much less about size. Think of a wellness floor that's already built, a proper wine cellar, or a kitchen that was redone recently.

Houses that need work are sitting. Renovation costs are still high and good trades are booked out in most metros, so buyers knock the cost and the wait off their offers, or just skip the house. The difference in price between a redone home and a comparable project house got a lot bigger this year.

Six closings that show the spread

These come from H1 2026 recorder filings in six metros. We've only listed the block and street, since this is a market report and there's no reason to point at anyone's house. Prices are what was recorded. Days on market run from the first list date to contract, relists included.

Metro Block / street Condition at list Recorded price Ask at contract DOM
Greater Boston (Newton, MA) 100 block, Ward St Renovated 2024, turnkey $3.15M 102% of last ask 11
Greater Boston (Newton, MA) 300 block, Waban Ave Original 1988 kitchen and baths $2.42M 88% of first ask 129
Naples, FL 700 block, 3rd Ave S Turnkey, new impact glass $4.90M 96% of last ask 74
Naples, FL 1400 block, Gulf Shore Blvd N Deferred maintenance, roof at end of life $3.60M 79% of first ask 211
Scottsdale, AZ 6100 block, E Cholla Ln Builder spec, never occupied $2.85M 100% of ask, with incentives 38
Westchester County, NY 30 block, Woodland Rd Renovated 2025, finished wellness level $4.05M 104% of last ask 9

Compare the pairs, not the averages. In every metro, the finished house sold at or above its last ask in anywhere from two weeks to ten weeks. The project house nearby sat three to seven months and closed 12-21% under its first asking price. To us that gap says more about H1 2026 than the national median does.

The regional split

The national average blends two very different markets:

  • Northeast and Midwest: the tightest in the country. They've been under-built for years, so there's little inventory, and luxury prices rose the most here, up high single digits in some metros.
  • Sun Belt (Texas, Florida, Arizona): the softest. Lots of new construction plus higher insurance and carrying costs pushed inventory up, and prices were flat or a little down in several metros. Most of the national weakness is here.
  • West Coast: mixed. Coastal enclaves with no room to build held up. Higher-tax, higher-cost metros had fewer sales.
  • Mountain resort markets: flat at a high level. Ski-in/ski-out homes with good features still sell. Dated ones get marked down.

So if you're looking at one national number, keep in mind that a buyer in Miami and a buyer in Boston are dealing with opposite markets this year.

What we expect in the second half of 2026

We think H2 looks a lot like H1, maybe a bit better:

  1. Rates come down, slowly. If mortgage rates get to the low 6% range by year end, we'd expect a few more listings, not a flood. Even a little more inventory gives buyers more to choose from without knocking prices down.
  2. National prices keep inching up. Low-single-digit growth for the year is our best guess. The Northeast and Midwest should do better than that, and the Sun Belt flat or soft.
  3. Sales pick up a little. Sellers are slowly getting used to rates where they are, and people still have to move for jobs, divorces and so on. So we'd expect a few more closings than in H1, before prices move much.
  4. The gap between finished and unfinished houses gets wider. Sellers who put in the design details buyers want now before listing should get paid for it. Sellers who list as-is should expect to negotiate.

This could go wrong in either direction. If rates fell faster, bidding wars could come back and push prices up more than we expect. A big drop in stocks would hit this end of the market harder than any other, because it runs on investment money, not wages.

The bottom line

Buyers got something in H1 that they never had in the last cycle, which is time. There still isn't much inventory, but the frenzy's over. If you're patient and picky, you can buy without overpaying. Just be ready to move fast when the right finished house comes up.

Sellers, it's simpler for you. Buyers will pay well for a finished house with the features they want in a metro where there isn't much for sale. They won't pay extra for square footage, they'll take off for maintenance you put off, and they won't meet a Sun Belt price set on hope. If the house is ready the way buyers want it, the plateau helps you.

Sources and method

Here's where each figure comes from, so you can check it:

If a source revises a number after we publish, we update ours and note it in the report's revision line instead of changing it without saying so. "The segment" here means single-family sales at $700,000 and above, nationally, and we spell that out so anyone can reproduce the numbers. If you think we got something wrong, tell the desk and we'll publish what we find (see our editorial standards).

Reported by Harrison Vale, Real Estate Markets Editor, a former prime-market broker licensed since 2009. Luxury Hôm has no financial interest in any property or brokerage named above.