California’s housing reality: Affordability, prices, sales dip

As 2026 starts, cracks are appearing in whatever magic has kept California’s housing market intact.

My trusty spreadsheet found affordability woes are spreading, with just a whiff of price drops and homebuying at near-record lows.

The reality is even the least expensive parts of California have become unaffordable for homebuyers.

Ponder affordability data from Attom, which tracks the typical house hunter’s financial challenges dating to 2005 in 36 California counties. By comparing home values, mortgage rates and household incomes, Attom determined the share of income required for a home purchase.

Splitting those 36 counties into three slices helps to show how the homebuying burden has changed from 2025’s fourth quarter to not-so-recent lows in buying’s financial burden – a decade-plus ago, just after the Great Recession slashed prices.

Yes, affordability may be improving in early 2026, but these figures highlight how far affordability has fallen.

First, look at California’s 12 priciest counties where a median 83% of income went toward the fourth-quarter’s $1 million home price. But buying also takes 83% of incomes in the 12 cheapest counties, with a median price of $398,000.

Next, eyeball the stunning change in this financial stress from its bottom.

The median burden in the priciest counties has slightly more than doubled from their low of a 37% share of income.

But that same stress more than quadrupled from a ...