Buyers have more to choose from than at any point this year, and the sellers cutting price are the ones who priced to last spring.
August 2026 · Anita Rich
Inventory has climbed for four straight weeks, and for the first time since spring a meaningful share of active listings have taken a price cut.
That is not a market breaking. That is a market where buyers finally have choices and sellers have to answer for their number.
The last time inventory in Sherman Oaks climbed for four straight weeks in August was 1994. Buyers had been waiting all summer, sellers blinked first, and the market turned in about eleven weeks.
I am not telling you this year is 1994. I am telling you a rising-inventory August is not a crisis. I have now worked through nine of them, and the sellers who did well in every one did the same two things: they priced to today's closed sales rather than last spring's, and they did not chase the market down in twenty-five thousand dollar increments.
Price to the last sixty days of closed sales, not to spring. Your first two weeks are still the whole ballgame. One meaningful reduction beats four small ones — buyers read a stack of small cuts as a seller who is not done cutting. And preparation matters more in a slower market, not less: when there are eight choices instead of two, the one that shows best wins.
You have more choice and less competition than at any point this year. Sellers who have already reduced are telling you they are listening. Anything sitting past forty-five days is worth an offer conversation rather than a pass. And contingencies are negotiable again in a way they simply were not in 2021.
Not an automated estimate. A written equity review for your specific address: what you paid, what your street has done since, and what it would realistically sell for this fall. Ask me and I will put it together.
Written by Anita Rich, licensed in California since 1980 and a broker since 2004. If you want this read applied to your own address, ask.
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