Summerland median, twelve months to August
Of the Montecito figure, up from 71% in 2023
Days, median from launch to contract
The claim
“Summerland is where you buy when Montecito is out of reach.”
Three years ago that was broadly true. A buyer priced out of the Riviera or the upper lanes would drive ten minutes south and find the same light and the same water for a little over two thirds of the money. The village was a compromise, and it was sold as one.
It is not sold that way now. At $1,120 a square foot the gap has closed to twelve per cent, and the buyers arriving in the village are not coming for the discount. They want a house they can walk out of to a café, a train that stops twice an hour, and a garden small enough to keep.
What we did
Nineteen sales in the village, read against the six neighbourhoods we cover.
We looked at every sale above $3 million in Summerland over twelve months and asked the buyers, where we acted for them or could reach them, what else they had seen. Eleven of the nineteen had not looked in Montecito at all.
What three of the buyers chose
Alameda House, a walk from the station
Montecito not considered
Sunset Terrace, above the bluff
Chosen over Hope Ranch
The Orchard, half an acre
Sold above guide
Summerland is still smaller, still louder when the train goes through, and still a bluff rather than a lane. What it is no longer is the cheaper choice, and the particulars we write for it have stopped saying so.
Written between viewings · Havilon & Co.