The McLennan Team · August 2026
Desert Living.
Real estate, places and perspective.
This month
The valleywide headline barely moved. Underneath it, five cities told five very different stories. Here is what the July data actually says, and where we have been going when it is 112 degrees outside.
At a glance
Source: Greater Palm Springs REALTORS Desert Housing Report, July 2026, produced by Market Watch LLC. Ninety day period ending July 31, 2026. Retrieved August 10, 2026.
The market
The median price of a detached home in the Coachella Valley closed July at $650,000, a change of exactly 0.0 percent from a year ago. Attached homes came in at $435,000, down 3.1 percent.
Flat is not the same as quiet.
Less to choose from, moving at a reasonable clip, sellers still conceding a little at the table.
Not a boom. Not a correction. A market that is behaving.
Where the money is
52.9 percent of every dollar transacted in the valley came from homes above one million.
| Inventory above $1M | 692 to 590, down 15% |
| $1M to $1.999M months of supply | 6.1 to 4.1 |
| $2M+ average discount to list | 5.4% |
| $2M+ median market time | 59 days, down 6 |
Supply above one million fell about 15 percent, well ahead of the 9.9 percent drop valleywide. The $1M to $1.999M band saw the largest compression of any price bracket in the report. And yet the average discount above two million widened.
Our read.
Luxury sellers have less competition than a year ago and less pricing latitude than they think. Buyers at this level are not rushed. They are also not absent.
Around the valley
Five cities, one month, five different markets.
La Quinta
$104.3M a month in dollar sales · around 80 closingsAbout $1.3 million per transaction, within striking distance of Palm Springs and Palm Desert on dollars while recording substantially fewer sales. La Quinta is not a volume market. It is a concentration market, and the concentration is at the top.
Indian Wells
+42.0% attached pricing · detached down 9.4%Same city, same month, opposite directions. At roughly twenty sales a month, a handful of transactions moves the entire number, which is exactly why one Indian Wells statistic should never be trusted alone.
Rancho Mirage
285 homes for sale · up from 276The only city in the valley with more homes for sale than a year ago. It also carries 5.1 months of supply, the loosest of these five, while detached pricing rose 2.0 percent. More choice and firmer pricing usually means the mix of what is selling has shifted rather than the market itself.
Palm Desert
$106.1M a month, from about $86M · up 23%On essentially flat unit sales: 130 closings this July against 127 last July. The city did not get busier. The mix of homes changing hands moved higher in price.
Palm Springs
−20.5% below its 2022 peakThe widest gap from peak of any city in the report, and still the busiest market in the valley by both units, 137 a month, and dollars, $122.5 million. The average size detached home sits at $1,127,569, down 5.2 percent. Price reset and buyer demand are moving together, which is less of a contradiction than it sounds.
One number is never a market
If you take one thing from this issue, take Indian Wells. Depending on which line of the July report you read, it is:
All five are true. All five come from the same document. None of them describes Indian Wells on its own.
This is what small luxury markets do. When a city closes twenty homes a month, three unusual sales invert a trend line. Detached and attached behave like separate economies.
So when someone hands you a number about your neighborhood, ask what segment it covers, what period it measures, and how many transactions sit behind it.
Usually the answer is fewer than you would expect. Our community guides carry MLS figures for ten private communities individually, updated monthly, for exactly this reason.
The Desert Edit
What we are actually doing now that the season is over.
The perfect desert escape from the heat
Three stops. One Sunday. Roughly thirty degrees cooler.
| 8:00 a.m. Palm Springs Aerial Tramway |
Weekend service starts at 8:00 in summer and the first cars are the empty ones. Ten minutes up, five climate zones, and you step out at 8,516 feet into pine. |
| 11:00 a.m. Desert View Trail |
A mile and a half, guided by Mount San Jacinto State Park volunteers every Sunday through September 6, free with admission and no registration. |
| 4:00 p.m. onward Pines Café |
The tramway is running its Ride ’N’ Dine package at four dollars off through August 31. Cafeteria style, no reservations, eaten looking down at a valley you are glad not to be standing in. Peaks Restaurant is the sit down option on the same level. |
Summer hours run through September 7. Buy weekend morning tickets online.
Where we are eating
La Quinta Cliffhouse. Worth leaving the pool for once the light goes gold on the rock face. Open seven days through the summer from 3:30. Ask for the patio tables against the cliff. In August you can actually get one.
78250 Highway 111, La Quinta
What we are doing
Alternative Palm Springs: Other Desert Architectures, at the Palm Springs Art Museum through January 4, 2027. If you care about desert houses at all, it is the most interesting hour you will spend indoors this summer. One to know before season starts and the parking gets serious.
Thursday evenings, 5 to 8 p.m. Free. 101 Museum Drive, Palm Springs
Local favorite
Brandini Toffee, Rancho Mirage. Buying two boxes instead of one is not overpreparing. It is August. The hostess gift question has been solved for years. Open daily ten to five, and the Bob Hope Drive shop lets you watch the toffee being made while you eat an ice cream bar you did not plan on.
42250 Bob Hope Drive, Rancho Mirage
For the calendar
Certified Farmers Market, Main Street, Old Town La Quinta. Sundays, eight to one, from October. The unofficial start of the season.
The McLennan view
Listing this fall? The inventory math is in your favor and the pricing math is not. Fewer competing homes above one million than last August, wider discounts at the close. The sellers who do well price to the market they are entering rather than the one they remember. More in our guide to selling a luxury home here.
Buying? More leverage than the headline numbers suggest and less time than you think. Inventory contracted almost 10 percent valleywide, and the sharpest supply compression in the report happened in the segment everyone assumes is soft.
Just watching your equity? Stop reading city level averages about your neighborhood. The country club and community numbers behind them look nothing alike, and we have those.
Laurie has been reading this valley for more than twenty five years, through several cycles that looked exactly this ambiguous in August and resolved clearly by January.
If you want the numbers for your specific community rather than your city, that is a conversation, not a form.
Frequently asked questions
What is the median home price in the Coachella Valley?
The median price of a detached home closed July 2026 at $650,000, unchanged from a year earlier. Attached homes came in at $435,000, down 3.1 percent. Those are valleywide figures and they conceal a great deal: individual cities and communities within them moved in quite different directions over the same period.
Is the Coachella Valley a buyer's or seller's market?
Neither, on the July 2026 figures. Months of supply fell from 4.9 to 4.3, and anything under six reads as balanced. Inventory tightened by 9.9 percent year on year and homes sold four days faster. But detached homes still closed 3.1 percent under list, slightly wider than the prior year, and only 10 percent of sales closed above asking.
What is happening in the luxury market?
Supply above one million fell about 15 percent, well ahead of the 9.9 percent drop valleywide, and the $1M to $1.999M band saw the largest compression of any price bracket. Yet the average discount above two million widened to 5.4 percent. Luxury sellers have less competition than a year ago and less pricing latitude than they may think.
Why do figures for my city seem contradictory?
Because small markets produce unstable statistics. Indian Wells in July 2026 was simultaneously down 9.4 percent on detached pricing, up 42 percent on attached, third tightest in the valley on supply, slowest on market time and widest on discount to list. All five figures come from the same report. When a city closes twenty homes a month, three unusual sales invert a trend line.
Where can I get figures for my specific community?
We publish MLS figures for ten private communities across La Quinta, Indian Wells, Palm Desert and Thermal, updated monthly, in our community guides. City averages tell you very little about a particular street, and the community numbers behind them frequently look nothing alike.
Laurie McLennan and Cailin McLennan, The McLennan Team at Desert Sotheby’s International Realty, La Quinta, California
Market data: Greater Palm Springs REALTORS Desert Housing Report, July 2026, produced by Market Watch LLC for GPSR and CDAR. Retrieved August 10, 2026. Business hours, exhibition dates and event details verified August 10, 2026 and subject to change. Not intended as a solicitation of properties currently listed with another broker.