Updated October 2, 2026
There are 245 single family homes for sale across the South Bay. That is every available house in the Beach Cities and on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, counted together.
The South Bay has been closing about 109 houses a month all year. So 245 houses is a little over two months of selling. If nothing new came on the market, every house for sale here today would be gone by about December 8.
Nationally the same measure sits at 4.9 months, the highest in more than ten years. California sits at 3.7 months and Southern California at 3.8. The South Bay is carrying less than half the supply the country is, at the moment the country has more of it than at any point since 2015.
| Area | For sale | Closed Jan to Sep | Months of supply |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Segundo | 8 | 58 | 1.2 |
| Redondo Beach | 32 | 213 | 1.4 |
| Hermosa Beach | 14 | 76 | 1.7 |
| Palos Verdes Estates | 22 | 114 | 1.7 |
| Manhattan Beach | 45 | 217 | 1.9 |
| Rolling Hills Estates | 14 | 46 | 2.7 |
| Palos Verdes Peninsula | 9 | 23 | 3.5 |
| Rancho Palos Verdes | 88 | 221 | 3.6 |
| Rolling Hills | 13 | 15 | 7.8 |
| South Bay combined | 245 | 983 | 2.2 |
Single family homes only. Condominiums and townhomes are not included. Active listings as of October 2, 2026, divided by the average monthly closing pace over January through September 2026. Chhabria Real Estate Company analysis of California Regional MLS records. Stats presented here represent the city or area as a whole, not any one individual property.
What is months of supply, and why do I run it first?
It answers one question. If nothing new came on the market, how long would it take to sell everything currently for sale, at the pace things are actually selling?
The arithmetic is one division you can do yourself. Manhattan Beach closed 217 houses in nine months, so about 24 a month. There are 45 for sale. That is a little under two months.
I run this before anything else because inventory turns before price does. When supply moves, days on market follows it, and what sellers get against their asking price follows that. Watching them in that order is how you see a change arriving instead of confirming one that already happened.
The conventional reading runs like this: under roughly three months, sellers hold the leverage, because buyers are choosing from a small set. Above roughly six months, buyers hold it. In between is the zone most people mean when they say “a balanced market.” El Segundo, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Palos Verdes Estates and Manhattan Beach all sit under two months.
How does the South Bay compare to the rest of the country?
This is the part most national coverage will not tell a South Bay owner, because national coverage is reporting on a different market.
| Market | Months of supply | As of |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 4.9 | August 2026 |
| Southern California | 3.8 | August 2026 |
| California | 3.7 | August 2026 |
| The South Bay | 2.2 | October 2, 2026 |
The national figure is the highest in over ten years. Total United States inventory passed 1.62 million homes in August, the first time it has been above 1.6 million since November 2019. The story everywhere else this year is that supply is coming back. That has not reached the Beach Cities or Palos Verdes.
One caution on reading that table. The national figure from the National Association of Realtors covers all existing homes, including condominiums and co-ops, and divides by a seasonally adjusted current sales rate. The California figures from the California Association of Realtors are single family only, which matches ours. Ours divides by our own trailing nine month closing pace. These are close cousins rather than the same calculation, and the comparison is directional rather than decimal for decimal.
Why is supply here so much lower?
Months of supply can be low two ways. Inventory is thin, or sales are fast. Here it is inventory.
The usual explanation is rate lock-in. An owner holding a mortgage in the threes gives it up by selling, so fewer owners sell and inventory thins. That is real, and it is happening everywhere. What it does not explain is why the South Bay sits at less than half the national figure. Rate lock-in applies to an owner in Riverside exactly as it applies to an owner in Hermosa Beach.
My read on the difference is the buyer side, not the seller side. Lock-in pulls sellers back everywhere. What varies by market is how far it pulls buyers back with them. In most of the country the buyer needs a conforming mortgage, so when rates rise both sides step back together and the ratio between them barely moves. Here, a large share of listings sit above the conforming loan limit, where pricing is set by individual lenders and portfolios rather than by the agencies, and where the rate every headline quotes is not the number the buyer is working from. The seller side pulls back hard, the buyer side pulls back much less, and supply stays thin.
The supporting number is already published. In our reading of the first week after the September rate hike, 77 percent of active listings on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and 72 percent in the Beach Cities were priced above the 2026 conforming loan limit for Los Angeles County of $1,249,125. In Torrance and San Pedro, that figure was 19 percent. Those are different financing markets wearing the same weather.
Did prices rise this year?
Less than the headline figures suggest. A median can rise without values rising at all.
Sales volume barely moved. We closed 983 houses in the first nine months of 2026 against 969 in the same months of 2025, up 1.4 percent. The number of South Bay families moving is essentially unchanged.
| Area | Median sale price | Change | Median per sq ft | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palos Verdes Estates | $2,995,202 | up 15.6% | $1,067 | down 0.1% |
| Manhattan Beach | $3,950,000 | up 15.6% | $1,539 | up 4.8% |
| Rolling Hills Estates | $2,609,000 | up 8.7% | $848 | down 5.1% |
| Hermosa Beach | $2,792,500 | up 2.0% | $1,441 | up 8.1% |
| Rancho Palos Verdes | $1,875,000 | up 0.6% | $809 | no change |
| Redondo Beach | $1,775,000 | down 4.1% | $1,007 | down 2.4% |
| El Segundo | $2,012,500 | down 4.2% | $1,106 | up 6.7% |
Look at Palos Verdes Estates. The median rose 15.6 percent while the price per square foot did not move at all. A median tells you about the middle house that sold. It does not tell you what houses are worth. When the median jumps and the price per square foot stays flat, what changed is which houses sold, not what they are worth. Bigger houses traded in P.V. this year.
Manhattan Beach is the honest counter-case. The median rose 15.6 percent and the price per square foot rose 4.8 percent, so roughly a third of that move is real appreciation and the rest is mix. Rolling Hills Estates runs the other way, with a median up 8.7 percent on a price per square foot down 5.1 percent.
A median is a market number. Your house is priced on its square footage and its land.
What does this mean if you own a home here?
Very little is competing with you. In Manhattan Beach there are 45 houses for sale in the whole city. In Hermosa Beach there are 14. In El Segundo there are eight.
That is the position you are selling into, and it is the opposite of what national coverage is reporting right now. The country is being told inventory is recovering, and it is, just not in the Beach Cities and not on the Peninsula.
What your house is worth on your street, in your price band, with your view and your lot, is a different conversation, and the price per square foot column above is the reason why.
What does this mean if you are buying here?
Rancho Palos Verdes is where you have choice. It holds 88 of the 245 houses on the market, 36 percent of everything for sale across the South Bay, and it carries 3.6 months of supply against 1.2 in El Segundo. If your search can include the Palos Verdes hills, your position is materially different from a buyer locked onto the sand.
Everywhere else, preparation matters more than patience: financing arranged in advance, a clear read on what you will pay for the right house, and a decision already made about what you will do when the right one appears.
One number has moved toward you. Days on market fell across most of the South Bay, but that is a measure of speed, not of price. What sellers actually receive against asking is tracked separately on our Market Insights page.
How to read these numbers honestly
Rolling Hills and the Peninsula catch-all are small enough to move on a handful of sales. Rolling Hills closed 15 houses in nine months and the catch-all closed 23. Rolling Hills shows a median up 47.5 percent, which on 15 sales is a statement about which houses sold rather than about that market. I am printing it because dropping the one market that behaves differently is how numbers start to mislead, but I would not build a decision on it.
Inventory is live and it moves. When I checked these counts a second time the same afternoon, three of these markets had already changed: two houses came off in Palos Verdes Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes, one came on in Rolling Hills Estates. That moved the combined reading by a tenth of a month. Every active figure here carries the date it was taken for that reason.
These are single family homes. Condominiums and townhomes are a real share of what is for sale in Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach in particular, and this reading is silent on them.
I will run this again at the October market report on October 20, on the far side of the thirty day window where contracts signed after the September rate decision start closing here. That reading will say whether two months of supply is where this market is settling or just where it paused.
If you want to know what any of this means on your actual street and in your actual price band, that is a conversation about your unique property rather than about the whole area, and it is the conversation I am here for.
Sources
- Active listings, closed sales, median sale price, median price per square foot and days on market, single family residence: Chhabria Real Estate Company analysis of California Regional MLS records through Matrix, pulled and verified October 2, 2026. Counts verified against Matrix result totals one market at a time.
- United States months supply of 4.9 and total inventory of 1.62 million units: National Association of Realtors, Existing-Home Sales, August 2026, released September 10, 2026.
- California Unsold Inventory Index of 3.7 months and Southern California at 3.8 months, single family homes: California Association of Realtors, August 2026 home sales and price report, released September 16, 2026.
- Share of active listings above the conforming loan limit, and the 2026 Los Angeles County conforming limit of $1,249,125: Chhabria Real Estate Company, Higher Rates and the South Bay, September 23, 2026.
- Median sale price, price per square foot, days on market and share of list by city: Market Insights.
General real estate information only. Not tax, lending or investment advice.
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