Published September 21, 2026 in Market Update

Brentwood Bidding Wars Have Gone Silent for 77 Days

By Listing Leads

Real estate, Brentwood

I pulled every lived-in home sale in Brentwood, all 894 of them, through September 16, 2026. One number stopped me cold. The last bidding war, meaning a lived-in home that sold 3% or more over what it first asked, went under contract on July 1 in Laurelwood. That is 77 days ago. Since then, 113 lived-in homes found a buyer. Not one of them crossed that line. I want to show you what that silence looks like across every price range, because the picture is not the same everywhere.

The $800K to $1.25M range won on almost every measure that matters to a seller

Nearly 43 in 100 homes priced between $800K and $1.25M sold at or over their asking price. That is the best rate of any range in Brentwood. The range just below it, under $800K, came in at 37.8%. Both of those beat the market by a wide margin.

The $1.25M to $1.9M range dropped to 27.2%. The $1.9M and up range fell further still, to 24.1%. That means 75.9% of homes in that top range sold below their asking price. For a seller, that is a very different conversation than the one happening in the middle of the market.

The speed numbers tell the same story. Homes priced from $750K to $1.25M took a typical 34 days to sell. That is the fastest of any price range. Homes priced $3M and up took a typical 104 days. The gap between the fastest and slowest range is 70 days, and that is 70 days of carrying costs, uncertainty and price pressure.

Here is the mistake I see sellers make. They price at the top of what they hope for, not the top of what the market is paying. The homes that gave up without selling first asked a typical $1,449,500. The homes that sold first asked a typical $1,250,000. That $199,500 gap is not a coincidence. It is the price of wishful thinking.

The top of the market wins on price but loses on nearly everything else

Homes priced $3M and up did sell for more money. The typical sold price there was $3,762,500. Nobody disputes that. But 29.8% of them gave up without a sale. That is nearly 3 in 10. In the $750K to $1.25M range, only 12.6% gave up.

The $2M to $3M range was not much easier. There, 22.2% gave up. That is more than 1 in 5. And when those homes did sell, they got back only 93.3% of what they first asked. A seller who started at $2.5M ended up getting 93.3% of that back at closing, not the full price they had hoped for.

The surprise in this data is the under $750K range. You might expect the lowest price range to be the easiest sell. It was not. Its gave-up rate was 20.5%, higher than the $750K to $1.25M and $1.25M to $2M ranges. The sweet spot for sellers in Brentwood right now is the middle, not the bottom and not the top.

One more number worth sitting with. Right now, 349 homes are for sale in Brentwood. Of those, 60.7% have already dropped their price. The typical price drop is $107,500. That is not a small adjustment. That is a seller who priced for a market that no longer exists, then had to chase it down.

What sellers and buyers should each do differently right now

If you are selling, the 77-day silence on bidding wars is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to price carefully from the start. Homes that sat and then dropped their price gave up $107,500 on average. The homes that sold in their first month got back 100% of their last asking price and 100% of what they first asked. Those two groups made very different choices at the beginning, and the numbers show it.

If you are buying, the data gives you real leverage at the top of the market. Homes priced $3M and up took a typical 104 days to sell and gave up nearly 6.4% of their first asking price before closing. Homes that took five to six months to sell gave up 10.1% of their first asking price. The longer a home sits, the more a seller has already shown their hand. At 3.6 months of supply, this market still leans toward sellers overall, so move with confidence but not carelessness.