What the Luxury Housing Boom Left Behind

The nation’s luxury housing markets saw a surge in demand because to the epidemic, which condensed years of price increase into only 24 months. However, the unwinding has been anything but fair. According to Realtor.com’s May 2026 Luxury Housing Report, five areas, including San Francisco, have completely dropped below their pre-pandemic baselines, while only Minneapolis-St. Paul and Boise City, ID, have fully eclipsed their pandemic-era high.

The others fall somewhere in the middle, each offering a unique perspective on what happens to prices when the epidemic conditions that pushed them vanish. At 59% nationwide, the average luxury market has retained slightly more than half of its pandemic gains.

The luxury threshold hit $1,283,432 in May, the 26th straight month of a year-over-year reduction and a 1.4% decrease from the previous year, as part of the ongoing national recalibration. The million-dollar listing share, at 13.8%, is still well above the 7% to 9% range that characterized the market prior to COVID-19, and the rate of softening has significantly slowed from the 5%+ declines seen in early 2025, indicating that a floor may be forming.

“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.”

National Luxury Overview: May 2026

Note: To score each market, Realtor.com measured how much of the pandemic run-up remains intact today: a market above 100% has climbed past its peak and kept going; a market below 0% has given back every gain and fallen further than where it started before COVID arrived. 

Which Areas Kept the Largest Share of Gains?

As of February 2026, only Minneapolis-St. Paul and Boise City had totally surpassed their pandemic-era highs among the markets monitored. Minneapolis recorded a comparatively low 17.6% increase, which peaked in July 2023. Since then, it has continued to rise, currently at 5.0% over that post-pandemic peak. Luxury prices in Boise, which increased by 87.2% during the epidemic, peaked in November 2023 and are currently 4.2% higher.

Bend, OR (88.8%), and Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH (89.0% of run-up retained), lead the markets that are still getting close to but have not yet reached their peaks. Boston’s consistent success can be attributed to supply limitations and a stable, high-income clientele in the life sciences and financial services industries. A mirror tale of lifestyle-driven demand that hasn’t diminished can be found in Bend’s luxury market, where the entry point is close to $1.8 million and the top 1% of listings hit $4.78 million in May, up 7.7% year-over-year.

In areas where demand has continued to absorb a slight recovery in supply, Raleigh-Cary, NC; Las Vegas; and Wilmington, NC, each kept more than 79% of their pandemic run-ups. Thanks in part to its December 2023 peak—the most recent in the analysis—New York-Newark-Jersey City held 76.8%.

Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury held 64.7% of its 68.6% gain, continuing a recalibration in Connecticut, while Nashville, TN, held 66.7% of a run-up that doubled luxury prices during the epidemic. commuter markets that have developed throughout the previous 18 months.

Markets Retaining the Most Pandemic-Era Luxury Gains — U.S.

At the other end is San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. Although there was a relatively small 15.3% increase in its price during the epidemic, the subsequent correction completely wiped those gains and pushed further: The luxury barrier for February 2026 is $695,000 lower than its pre-pandemic baseline, the worst reversal of any market monitored. The main factors include a contracted buyer pool, outmigration, and headcount cutbacks in the tech sector.

However, recent data revealed that a counterforce is beginning to emerge. AI equity liquidity events, such as employee tender offers and secondary market transactions at firms like OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks, have kept Bay Area luxury down payments consistently high, running about 6.6 percentage points above pre-pandemic norms, according to a recent Realtor.com analysis. That equates to an extra $198,000 in cash up front for an entry-level luxury property in the Bay Area that costs about $3 million. Demand at the top of the market is being introduced by a small but highly compensated AI workforce, which goes against the general correction.

Urban Honolulu (-3.0%) and Kahului-Wailuku, Hawaii (-6.3%) have joined San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (-54.4% of run-up retained) and Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO (-13.7%), in declining below their pre-pandemic baselines. Due to persistent uncertainty around the concentration of federal jobs in the city, Washington, D.C. only kept 3.2% of its epidemic gains, with prices just above February 2020 levels.

Million-dollar listings made up between 7% and 9% of all listings nationwide prior to the epidemic. That percentage increased to a peak of 15.4% in May 2023 and is still significantly higher than any pre-pandemic reading at 13.8% in May 2026. Even though total inventory is still below pre-pandemic highs, the absolute number of million-dollar listings nationwide is slightly over 146,000, or 40% higher than the pre-pandemic peak.

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