If you own a home in Los Angeles, or you're thinking about buying one, you've probably heard some version of this lately: prices are finally dropping, inventory is up, the market is bad right now.
And then you look at what your home is worth today compared to what you paid for it, and it's still way up.
So which is it?
Is the LA market actually crashing, or are we just in a different chapter of the same long story?
I'm Keri White, a real estate agent here in Los Angeles, and this is a question I get from clients almost every week. So let's set the crash headlines aside for a minute and actually look at the data, along with a few real stories from clients who are living this right now.
Here's what we'll cover:
- What LA home prices have actually done over the last 10 to 15 years
- How inventory and under-building shape what's possible in this market
- What all of that means for you right now
By the end, you'll be able to answer "Is the LA market crashing?" with more than just a gut feeling.
The Long-Term Story: What LA Home Prices Have Actually Done
Let's zoom out before we zoom in.
If you look at the major LA home-price indices, including Case-Shiller, FHFA, and long-term county data, the pattern over the last 10 to 15 years is pretty clear.
- Over the last 10 years, LA home values are up roughly 80 to 90 percent on average, depending on how you measure it.
- Over 15 years, they're up well over 150 percent from the post-2008 era to now.
- Zoom out even further, and one long-run analysis of LA County shows median prices rising about 275 percent from 1990 to 2022, which works out to roughly 8 to 9 percent per year on average over that 30-plus-year stretch.
There are dips and plateaus in there. 2008 happened. There have been smaller pullbacks and sideways years along the way.
But the long-term direction in Los Angeles has been up, not flat or down.
That doesn't mean prices can't fall. It does mean that if your entire plan is to wait for a huge crash, you're betting against decades of history in a market that tends to recover and grind higher over time.
Zooming Into the Recent Window
Now let's look at right now.
The median sale price in the City of Los Angeles is around $1,000,000, down less than 1 percent compared to the same period last year. Zillow shows the "typical" LA home value around $956,000, also off about 1 to 2 percent year over year.
Median listing prices are closer to $1.15 million, with active listings and days on market up modestly year over year.
So what we're actually seeing is a small give-back from peak prices, not a major collapse.
It's a market that ran very hard from 2020 to 2022, then flattened and adjusted as interest rates jumped.
Statewide data backs this up. California mid-tier and bottom-tier home prices surged by roughly 14 to 15 percent per year from 2020 to 2022.
Since mid-2022, they've basically tracked back to the same path they would have been on if they'd just kept growing at their pre-2020 trend of about 6 percent per year.
In other words, the pandemic era pulled a lot of future appreciation forward, and the last couple of years have been the market catching its breath.
That's very different from a crash.
The Other Half of the Equation: Supply
For years, LA has built far fewer homes than it's added people, fought over zoning, density, and new projects, and watched construction costs climb across land, labor, materials, and fees.
Even now, inventory is up from the absolute lows but still constrained.
LA County's median list price and inventory trends show more homes on the market than a year ago, but we're nowhere near an oversupply.
Statewide analyses say the same thing: inventory climbed in 2024 and 2025, but sales remain below pre-2020 levels, and affordability is the limiting factor, not a glut of homes.
Practically, that means higher interest rates have cooled demand and changed behavior, but there is no giant wave of new homes waiting to flood the LA market.
In most Westside and core LA pockets, you still can't easily replace what you own.
This mix of higher borrowing costs plus chronic under-building is why LA looks weird right now instead of collapsed.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
Here's what this feels like for a lot of Westside owners.
A client who bought more than 10 years ago calls and says everyone tells them the market is bad, their place is worth so much more than they paid, and they wonder if they're about to lose that or if they should sell before it all comes down.
We look at their specifics:
- What they paid versus what conservative comps suggest today
- How much debt they actually owe
- What happens to their equity under a few scenarios, including flat prices, a modest dip, and a modest rise
Even when we build in a reasonable pullback, they're still far ahead of where they started, because the last decade's appreciation has been so strong and because they're carrying a low mortgage rate with a manageable payment.
Once they see the math, the question shifts from:
"Is the market crashing?"
to:
"Does this house still fit the life we're living now?"
We often end up with a clearer sense of whether they want to move for lifestyle reasons, a timeline and conditions for a future move, and permission to stop panic-scrolling crash content.
The market didn't suddenly improve in that meeting.
Their sense of risk did, because they saw their 10-plus-year story in context instead of reacting to a one-year chart.
When a Property Hasn't Kept Up
Then there's the flip side: owners who feel the market hasn't done enough for them.
Think of a Santa Monica townhome owner who bought more than five years ago and has watched single-family homes nearby skyrocket while their townhome appreciated at a slower pace.
They come in feeling like they picked the wrong thing, that townhomes don't really move, and that if the market is "bad" now, maybe this is their last chance to get out.
When we walk through their numbers, their townhome has actually gone up over 5 to 10 years, just not as dramatically as the best single-family homes.
It's still anchored by Santa Monica's structural shortage, high demand, and strong rentability.
The real question becomes whether this asset is underperforming or simply different.
We layer in:
- What selling now and buying a different type of home would look like
- What keeping it as a home or future rental could mean over another decade
- How much of the frustration is about their own goals versus comparison to neighbors
Sometimes we do reposition into another asset.
Sometimes the conclusion is that this has been a solid, if not spectacular, performer, and the plan becomes to hold, maybe improve it, and reevaluate later.
Again, the market didn't crash or boom in that conversation.
We just aligned expectations with the reality of that segment.
What About Buyers Waiting for a Crash?
On the buyer side, the emotional story is different.
A lot of people come to me saying they're waiting for a real crash, that prices have to drop 20 to 30 percent for this to make sense.
They've watched national videos and charts that don't distinguish LA from everywhere else.
When we look at how few truly good homes come up each year in the pockets they want, overlay that with 10 to 15 years of appreciation data, and add the fact that building new supply here is slow and expensive, it becomes clear that LA can absolutely have corrections and softer years.
But the classic fire-sale version of a crash is unlikely to show up in the exact neighborhoods and price bands they want.
From there, the question becomes whether to buy now, with today's prices and rates, because the home fits the next 7 to 10 years of their life, or to wait on purpose, with an actual plan, because their life and finances aren't ready yet.
That's very different from waiting for a crash that may never arrive in their sub-market.
So, Is the LA Market Crashing?
Over the last 10 to 15 years, LA has seen very strong appreciation, on the order of 80 to 90 percent in a decade and more than 150 percent over 15 years, even with the bumps along the way.
The last couple of years have been about flattening and modest pullbacks from a rapid spike, not a broad collapse.
And LA remains structurally under-built, especially in desirable, built-out pockets, which puts a floor under values even as rates bite.
So no, what we're seeing right now does not match a classic crash.
It looks more like a higher-rate, more thoughtful, more segmented market, where good homes still command strong prices and anything mispriced, tired, or poorly presented gets exposed.
For someone who's equity-rich, market-savvy, and serious about their next move, the better question isn't:
"Is the market crashing?"
It's this:
In this version of Los Angeles, with this mix of long-term appreciation and current weirdness, what's the smartest move for your life and your balance sheet?
Want to Figure Out Where You Stand?
If you're trying to figure out where you sit on this spectrum, whether you're at risk, you're fine, or you're missing an opportunity, I'm happy to walk through a Long-View Checkup on your specific situation.
That means we look at:
- What you paid
- Where your home likely sits today
- What 10 to 15 years of history suggest for your type of property
- A couple of realistic paths for the next 3 to 5 years
- Whether staying, improving, moving, or diversifying makes the most sense
And we ground all of it in your actual life, including kids, work, commute, and lifestyle, not just lines on a chart.
If that sounds useful, reach out and let's talk.
And if you want to keep up with how this story evolves, from interest rates to inventory to the micro-markets you care about most, subscribe to KeriTV on YouTube and check out my other videos on interest rates, whether to buy now or wait, and whether it's a good time to sell.
