Sale-to-List Ratios, Ranked: Who's Getting Full Price and Who Isn't

Rank every place in the territory by one number, the average sale-to-list percentage over the twelve weeks ending August 30, 2026, and something becomes obvious fast: not everyone is getting the same deal at the closing table.

At the top, sellers in Mission Viejo closed at a full 100% of list price. Full ask, no discount, no negotiating room given up.

Tustin sellers matched that mark, also closing at 100% of list over the same period.

Just behind them, Dana Point sellers landed close to full ask too, closing at about 100% of list, more precisely 99.9%.

Laguna Niguel wasn't far off either, closing at roughly 100% of list, at 99.6%.

Lake Forest sat near the middle of the pack, closing at about 99% of list.

The other Mission Viejo ZIP landed in the same neighborhood, closing at about 99% of list as well.

Aliso Viejo came in close behind, at 99.1%.

Laguna Woods closed at roughly 99% of list, at 98.9%.

Trabuco Canyon landed at about 99% of list too, at 98.8%.

Irvine splits itself across this ranking rather than sitting in one spot. One of its ZIPs closed at about 99% of list, at 98.6%, and another closed a bit lower, at roughly 98% of list, at 97.8%.

But the lowest number on the entire list belongs to Irvine as well. Its weakest-performing ZIP closed at about 97% of list, at 96.9%, the bottom of the ranking.

That gap matters more once you see what happened to price at the same time. In Dana Point, the median sale price fell about 3% year over year. Over that same comparison, the average sale-to-list ratio there rose about 3 percentage points. Homes are fetching less, and sellers are giving up less to get it done.

The same pattern shows up in Tustin, on the ZIP where both figures are measurable. The median sale price there dropped about 8% year over year. Over that same comparison, the average sale-to-list ratio still climbed, up about 1 percentage point. Sellers took a smaller number and still held their ground on the percentage of it they kept.

That is not what most people expect a softening price to look like. A falling median usually gets pictured alongside sellers caving on terms. Here, in two different places, the opposite happened: less money changed hands, but a bigger share of the asking price came with it.

Zoom out to the whole territory and the shape holds. Across the twelve weeks ending August 30, 2026, MLS sold data puts the territory's median sold price at $1,325,000 and the median days on market at 65 days. The median sale-to-list ratio across the territory came in at 99%, up from about 99% compared with a year earlier.

For a homeowner deciding when to list in the lower-performing Irvine ZIP, that bottom-of-the-list number is worth sitting with. Running roughly two points under the strongest markets in the territory doesn't mean the market turned against sellers there. It means buyers there have had a bit more room to negotiate than buyers a few miles away, and pricing to that reality, rather than to what a neighbor a few ZIPs over just got, is the difference between a clean sale and a long one.

For a seller in Dana Point or Tustin, the read is almost the reverse. Price alone is telling a softer story than the negotiating table is. Pricing off last year's median without checking where the sale-to-list ratio landed this period risks leaving room on the table that buyers there are no longer asking for.

What's worth watching from here is whether the gap at the bottom of this ranking closes or widens. If that Irvine ZIP starts closing the final couple of points, it says buyers there are running out of patience for negotiating room. If it widens instead, it says something is still working itself out in that particular pocket that the rest of the territory has already settled.

MLS sold data via Redfin ZIP-level aggregates.