The luxury housing correction is proving far from uniform.
A new report from Realtor.com found that luxury home values nationally have retained 59% of their pandemic-era appreciation, but the performance gap between markets continues to widen. While some metros have recovered enough to surpass their pandemic peaks, others have erased all of their COVID-era gains and fallen below pre-pandemic levels.
Nationally, the luxury threshold — defined as the 90th percentile of home prices — reached $1.28 million in May. While that represented a modest 0.7% monthly increase, it was down 1.4% from a year earlier, marking the 26th consecutive month of year-over-year declines in luxury pricing. Realtor.com noted that the pace of declines has moderated significantly from the 5%-plus annual drops seen in early 2025, suggesting the market may be approaching a floor.
"The pandemic didn't create the same luxury market everywhere, and the correction hasn't played out the same everywhere either," said Anthony Smith, senior economist at Realtor.com. "Two markets have surpassed their pandemic peaks entirely. Five have fallen below where they started before COVID arrived. The ones still holding their gains have something the others don't: real reasons for buyers to be there that have nothing to do with low mortgage rates and remote work."
Only Two Markets Have Moved Beyond Their Peaks
Among the markets analyzed, only Minneapolis-St. Paul and Boise had fully surpassed their pandemic-era luxury price peaks as of February 2026.
Minneapolis recorded a relatively modest pandemic luxury run-up of 17.6%, peaking in July 2023 before continuing higher. Boise, one of the pandemic boom's biggest beneficiaries, saw luxury prices surge 87.2% before reaching a peak in late 2023 and has since climbed above that level.
Other markets retaining most of their pandemic gains included Boston, Bend, Raleigh, Las Vegas, Wilmington, New York, Nashville, and Connecticut's Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury metro. Boston retained 89% of its pandemic luxury appreciation, while Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury held onto nearly 65% of the gains accumulated during the COVID housing boom.
California Markets Lead The Pullback
At the opposite end of the spectrum, several expensive coastal markets have experienced some of the deepest reversals.
San Francisco posted the weakest performance in the report. Although its luxury segment rose just 15.3% during the pandemic, subsequent declines erased those gains entirely. Realtor.com found the metro's luxury threshold now sits roughly $695,000 below its pre-pandemic baseline.
San Jose, Denver, Urban Honolulu, and Kahului-Wailuku also fell below their pre-pandemic luxury price levels. Washington, D.C., meanwhile, retained only 3.2% of its pandemic-era gains.
Realtor.com attributed much of the Bay Area's correction to tech-sector layoffs, outmigration, and a smaller buyer pool. However, the company noted that liquidity events tied to artificial intelligence companies, including employee tender offers and secondary share transactions, have helped sustain demand among a subset of high-net-worth buyers. According to the report, luxury down payments in the Bay Area remain roughly 6.6 percentage points above pre-pandemic norms.
Million-Dollar Listings Remain Elevated
Despite the correction, the luxury segment remains significantly larger than it was before COVID.
Million-dollar listings accounted for 13.8% of active inventory nationally in May, down slightly from recent highs but still well above the 7% to 9% range that characterized the market before the pandemic. Realtor.com reported more than 146,000 million-dollar listings nationwide, roughly 40% above the pre-pandemic peak count.
The report also suggests that while higher mortgage rates continue to pressure housing affordability broadly, wealthier borrowers remain active in many luxury markets. That distinction could become increasingly important for lenders and originators serving jumbo borrowers as overall housing demand remains uneven across the country.
