The number most luxury headlines used in August was $1,200,005. That's Realtor.com's entry point to the top 10% of U.S. listings, and it fell 4% from both July and a year earlier, the 29th consecutive month of annual decline. The 95th percentile (high-end luxury) slipped to about $1.89 million, and the 99th (ultraluxury) to about $5.16 million. Million-dollar homes are a slightly smaller share of active listings than a year ago, too.

None of that is wrong. It just won't tell most serious luxury buyers much about the house they're trying to buy.

We wrote about the jump in new listings in When Luxury Sellers Return: What Rising Fall Listings Mean for Luxury Homes. This piece looks at price instead. Where does luxury start in the metros people are actually shopping? How far above that does the top 1% go? And how can the national threshold keep falling while good homes in prime areas still get competitive offers?

Three markets inside one average

Look only at the national chart and August seems to be cooling. Look at the metros and you get three different pictures.

  1. Gateway and coastal markets are still expensive. Los Angeles topped the August list of most expensive metros. Luxury there starts near $3.92 million, and Kahului-Wailuku and Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury came in within 1% of it. Only a couple of top-ten markets went up month over month: Naples-Marco Island and San Jose. Naples was up roughly 9% year over year as its million-dollar inventory got tighter.
  2. The very top stretches unevenly. Nationally, the top 1% starts at about 4.3× the luxury entry point. In Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach the multiple is near 5.8, in Los Angeles near 5.6, and in New York near 5.3. Miami, LA and New York have hundreds of active listings above $10 million, and that depth creates a second market the national averages don't describe.
  3. Homes are selling at a mixed pace. At the 90th percentile, the median home sat on the market 74 days in August. That's four days faster than last August but about a week slower than July. So it's quicker than last year, which isn't the same as easy. Good houses still sell to picky buyers, and dated or overpriced ones sit.

Meanwhile the wider housing market is dealing with rates near multi-month highs and inventory that's building back up, and affluent buyers have held up better than everyone else. When the national luxury threshold softens, it's often the mid-luxury bands adjusting. A Los Angeles waterfront house or a Naples estate isn't suddenly trading like an average home in the middle of the country.

What "$1.2 million luxury" means for a local search

If you're shopping in Phoenix, Las Vegas or a smaller Sun Belt metro where local luxury starts near the national line, the August number is useful context. Entry luxury has eased there, and you should expect more room to negotiate on anything that isn't exceptional. If you're shopping in Los Angeles, Fairfield County, Naples or San Jose, the national $1.2 million figure barely applies.

What we'd do as a luxury buyer:

  • Ask for the local 90th, 95th and 99th percentiles instead of relying on a national luxury label. Your agent's last 90 days of closed comps in your segment are worth more than any national percentile.
  • Treat entry luxury and ultraluxury as separate markets. Where the gap is wide (Miami, LA, the resort markets), a deal at the entry band and a contested trophy home above $10 million involve very different leverage.
  • Watch which metros are still gaining. Naples, with supply tightening and thresholds rising, is a different story from New York, which posted a sharper monthly decline in the August table. The Florida details are in Florida’s Luxury Split: Why Miami and Tampa Are Outrunning the Nation.
  • Be realistic about financing. Rate-sensitive buyers feel threshold moves first, while cash and low-friction offers still set the pace on scarce turnkey homes, as we described in Cash Buyers vs. Rate-Sensitive Shoppers: Who Wins Luxury Inventory This Fall.

For sellers: a falling threshold isn't a reason to wait

Some owners hear that luxury thresholds are down nationally and decide to hold off until spring. That's how a fall listing goes stale.

If your metro's entry point is still high and well-presented homes sell within a competitive first two weeks, national softening is a reason to price precisely, and not a reason to stretch. If you're in a band where local thresholds and days on market are clearly easing, treat the August data as a warning. Buyers have options, and the first weekend of comps will punish a price that only worked in 2024's thin supply.

Good launches still win: strong photography, finished outdoor rooms and a price that holds up when buyers compare. Read this alongside the inventory picture in When Luxury Sellers Return and the timing advice in Is It a Good Time to Sell a Luxury Home?.

A local checklist for September and October

Buyers

  • Write down your actual metro and segment before you look at a national chart.
  • Tour 3-5 live comps in the same local band. Condition and privacy will tell you more than headline price cuts.
  • Where the gap between entry luxury and ultraluxury is wide, hire specialists who actually work the top 1%, rather than generalists quoting national averages.
  • Budget for the unknowns. Envelope, systems and privacy work can wipe out a discount quickly.

Sellers

  • Price to the last 60 days of local comps in your micro-market, not last year's peak or a national percentile.
  • Assume buyers have read the same Realtor.com tables you have, and that they'll still judge your house against the one that listed last weekend.
  • If traffic is thin by day 14, rethink the plan. Waiting for the national threshold to "recover" isn't a plan.

Where that leaves the national number

Anthony Smith at Realtor.com has called the national picture a recalibration: listings moving faster than a year ago in some places, prices easing at the entry line, and metros splitting sharply on where luxury begins and how far it runs. We think that's the right way to read it. The $1.2 million threshold tells you about the country. Your local percentile tells you about your search.

Sources: Realtor.com Luxury Housing Report, August 2026 (thresholds, days on market, metro rankings and entry-to-ultraluxury multiples). Reported by Harrison Vale, Real Estate Markets Editor. Nothing here is investment, tax or legal advice.