Mid-August on the Westside: Steady Prices, Slow Condos, and a Big Week for Abbot Kinney
The middle of August is usually when the Westside market takes a breath. This year it’s less a pause than a split — single-family homes holding firm while condos work through a backlog. Here’s what the numbers actually say, and what I’d do with them.
Over the past three months, the median sale price across the Westside came in around $1.8 million, up about 1.4% from the same stretch last year. Modest on its face. But look at price per square foot: roughly $987, up nearly 8% year over year. When the per-foot number climbs faster than the headline median, it tells you buyers aren’t paying more for more house — they’re paying more for better house. Renovated, well-built, move-in-ready product is commanding a premium, and everything else is negotiating. Homes are averaging about 42 days on market, only a couple of days slower than last year, so demand is there. It’s just discriminating.
Condos are a different story. As of this week there were nearly 600 condos listed across the Westside at a median asking price of $1.55 million, averaging 81 days on market — almost double the single-family timeline. That’s not a broken market, it’s a patient one. If you’re selling a condo right now, pricing to the last comp isn’t a strategy; pricing ahead of the building’s competition is. If you’re buying, this is the most leverage condo buyers have had in a while, especially in buildings where several units are listed at once.
From a construction standpoint, that per-foot premium is the number I keep coming back to. I spent years around building and design before real estate — at JANUS et Cie and The Peninsula Hotel Group — and the pattern is familiar: when money gets selective, it flows to quality you can verify. Good bones, honest materials, systems that were done right the first time. The design direction taking hold in 2026 — warmer palettes, natural materials, layered and livable rather than staged and sterile — lines up with what’s actually selling. If you’re prepping a home for market, put the budget into what an inspector and a discerning buyer will both notice.
Meanwhile, the neighborhoods themselves had a good week. The Tasting Kitchen is back on Abbot Kinney with founding chef Casey Lane, which matters more than a restaurant opening usually does — it anchored that block for years. In Santa Monica, Orla by Michael Mina is open at the Regent Santa Monica Beach, and Bower, a 6,500-square-foot surf-inspired all-day spot, is landing at the Colorado Center. Out in Malibu, the pier’s Sunday Sessions series has been bringing live music, food, and drinks to select summer Sundays. None of this shows up in a comp set, but it’s exactly the kind of street-level vitality that keeps Westside demand durable long after the rate headlines fade.
The takeaway: sellers of quality single-family homes still hold cards, condo sellers need sharper pricing and better presentation, and buyers should be walking properties with an eye for build quality — that’s where the market is paying its premium. Construction background. Market data. No sugarcoating.
Thinking about buying or selling on the Westside? Let’s talk.