What It Took to Win: Marin Market Update, Q2 2026
Spring is Marin's busiest season, and the data shows the same jump in activity year after year. This spring skipped the coffee and went straight to the espresso martini.
Marin sold 713 single-family homes in the second quarter, a 17.7% increase from Q2 2025. 93 homes never hit the market, more than a third of Marin buyers paid cash, and 102 homes sold in under five days.
Here is what that looked like on the ground.
713 Homes Sold. 93 Never Hit the Market.
Spring is when the public market is loudest, and yet roughly one in eight Marin homes traded off-market this quarter. No sign, no real estate apps, no Sunday open house.
If you spent the spring refreshing your saved search and wondering how you never heard about the house that just sold down the street, this is your answer. The homes were selling, but if you are not working with a well-connected agent in Marin, you were missing out.
102 Homes Sold in Under Five Days
This is not a browse-on-Sunday market. 102 homes went into contract within five days of hitting the market, and another 193 did not make it past day ten. The median Marin home took 20 days to sell in the first quarter. In Q2 it took 13. A year ago it was 17.
Pro tip for the buyers out there. If you see something you love on a Tuesday, do not wait for the Sunday open house. Meet your agent at the house that day. By Sunday it may already have offers, and if it doesn't, you have handed your head start to whoever shows up first.
Pro tip two. If you are financing, get fully underwritten before you start shopping. There will come a day when a home pops up and stops you in your tracks. You will want to write your strongest offer that night, and a pre-qualification letter will rarely get you there. Underwritten means your income, assets, and credit are already verified, so your finances read as solid to a seller. Otherwise the moment you fall in love, you are scrambling, and the scramble is where good buyers lose good houses.
More Than a Third of Buyers Paid Cash
258 of the 713 homes sold in Marin last quarter were all-cash purchases. That is 36%.
On any given house, there is more than a one-in-three chance the offer across from yours carries no loan contingency, no appraisal risk, and no lender timeline. That buyer can close in under ten days, and that's hard to beat.
If a cash offer is not the position you are in, don't panic. It's worth knowing it is not the only way to compete. Financing has become considerably more creative, and bridge lenders in particular can put a buyer in a cash-competitive position, with the speed and certainty a seller is looking for. Need an intro? We've got you.
57.5% of Marin Homes Sold Over Asking
Up from 41.4% in the first quarter. That shift is the clearest read on how fast pricing moved this spring.
Marin's median price per square foot went from $837 in the first quarter to $956 in the second, a 14% jump in ninety days. Year over year it rose 5.8%, from $904. The median sale price went from $1,700,000 to $1,865,000 over the same stretch.
That means a 2,000 square foot house today is about $238,000 more expensive than it was one quarter ago.
If you're a homeowner and thinking of selling, your equity moved meaningfully in a single quarter. If you're shopping and still on the fence, this is the cost of waiting in a rising market.
Source: SFAR Super Regional MLS / BrokerMetrics. Marin County single family homes, June 2025 – June 2026. Monthly values estimated from quarterly-labeled chart data.
Some of what happened here started across the bridge.
San Francisco is having a banner year. The median single-family home there is around $2,200,000, up roughly 17% in twelve months, and the city's inventory is down about 30% year over year. Homes are selling in 18 days on average, the fastest pace in five years.
In the first half of 2026, 144 San Francisco homes sold for at least $1,000,000 over asking. In the same stretch last year, eight did. Single-family homes there sold for an average of 25% over asking in May, against 10% a year earlier. Our city colleagues describe buyers who offered three and four million over and still lost.
Buyers are frustrated and shifting their focus to Marin and the Pensinsula.
The wave of AI money is rising, and employees at companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have spent years holding equity they could not actually spend. Both companies recently ran tender offers, which let staff sell a slice of their shares for real cash. Roughly $14 billion came loose that way, and both are reported to be heading toward public offerings, which would free up considerably more.
It is worth being precise about who this is, though. A handful of companies, and inside them a fairly small group of people. This is not the whole tech industry, and it does not land evenly across Marin. Above $4,000,000 in Southern Marin, that buyer is in your pool.
Where That Leaves You
If You Are Selling
The homes that cleared over asking were, almost without exception, ready before they listed. Paint, lighting, staging, and a price built to draw a crowd rather than defend a number. Preparation runs four to eight weeks. The homes that win in the fall market are starting to plan now.
If You Are Buying
The fall market is our second busiest selling season in Marin. Get your finances in order. Work with an agent who brings you both on and off-market properties and has the relationships to get in the door first. This market rewards the hustle, and that's one of many things we bring to the table.
The market is fast, the best homes are ready and spoken for early, and a real share of them never reach the public at all.
Start earlier than feels necessary. Be ready to move the day it matters. And work with people who will help you get ahead of the market.
