The Fed Hinted Higher, Not Lower. Here Is the SCV Seller Read.

More real estate, more news, all the time. Let me talk about what is actually happening here, June 23, 2026, Connor MacIvor, SellersOnlyAgent.com. I broke the whole thing down in the video above, and here is the written version with the seller moves spelled out, because the news this week has two stories most agents are going to skip, and both of them can cost a seller real money.

The Fed Held, and Hinted Higher

The Fed is going to hold rates, and then it hinted it might actually raise them. Read that again, because for months the loudest voices in real estate were promising the opposite. The whole pitch was, buy now, rates are about to drop, you will refinance into something beautiful next year. That was crying wolf. Rates did not drop. The central bank is now signaling it could go the other way.

So if you are a buyer out there, and maybe a little bit concerned, you want to check in with your lender and find out where your rate currently is, and then see what that looks like in payment. Not the rate you read about in a headline. Your rate, your scenario, your monthly number. Because even a minor interest rate increase could price you out depending on where you happen to be looking for real estate.

A Quarter Point Can Price a Buyer Out

In the Santa Clarita Valley, somewhere around 850,000 to 900,000 dollars is the sweet spot of Valencia and the different areas out here. That is roughly your median average band. If there is even a quarter point increase, it could price many buyers right out of that market. A quarter point does not sound like much until you put it against a payment on an 850,000 dollar home. Then it is a real number, the kind that moves a buyer from approved to declined.

Now, there would be an adjustment coming potentially, if in fact there were not enough other buyers to pick up the slack. That is the whole question. When one band of buyers gets priced out, do stronger buyers step in behind them to hold prices up, or does demand thin out? Right now, by the way properties are taking to sell and the length of time it is taking, it does not look like there are that many buyers waiting in the wings to jump in and pounce.

Buyers Are Not Waiting in the Wings

Even for the good deals, the properties that are priced fairly, we are still seeing 30 to 45 days to get into escrow. It depends on the city and the buyer drive, but we do not see them moving a lot faster than that. This is not the frenzy market where you list on Thursday and you are reviewing ten offers by Sunday. That market is gone for now, and pretending it is still here is how a seller overprices and then chases the market down with cuts.

This is the part that contradicts the easy headline. Nationally the sales number went up. Locally, the urgency is calmer. Both things are true at the same time, and a seller who only reads the national headline will misjudge their own listing. The same read on a market that rebalanced is in yesterday's SCV market read.

Absorption Creeping Toward Three Months

Our absorption rate is now creeping up toward three months. That means if no other real estate listings entered the market for sale here in the Santa Clarita Valley, and we continued to sell at the same pace we are selling right now, it would take about three months to clear everything. That is the absorption rate figure.

For some relevance: six months is kind of a normal, balanced market. We are at about half that. To get to six months we would need more inventory and we would need properties to take even longer to sell. I started real estate in 1998, and I am not sure I have ever really seen that six-month regularity hold for long out here. We have been spoiled by speed. So when absorption creeps from two months toward three, that is not a crash, it is the market exhaling. It still favors sellers who price right.

Never Buy on a Rate You Only Hope to Get

Here is the rule I will die on. Never, ever is a real estate purchase predicated on an interest rate you are hoping to have in the future. You go with what there is now, so you do not get carried away. And do not ever let anybody talk you into purchasing real estate because they just know that interest rates are going to come down. Nobody knows. The people who said that last year were wrong, and the buyers who believed them sat out a market that kept moving.

This cuts both ways for my sellers. Do not price your home on a fantasy about where rates and buyer demand will be in the fall. Price it on the comps that closed this month. If you want the discipline behind that, it is the same logic in what the last Fed meeting meant if you are selling.

May Sales Hit a Five-Month High

Here is the headline that surprises people given everything above. May home sales hit a five-month high. United States home sales rose 3.2 percent in May to a 4.17 million annual pace, the strongest in five months. So buyers are still buying, even with rates where they are. That tells you the wait-for-rates story was always shakier than it sounded.

But that is the overall national market. Out here in Santa Clarita, and across Los Angeles, we are not seeing those same big increases. In some areas it is almost a reverse effect. Where we are watching demand actually push is the areas close to these massive data center build-outs and tech junctions. Those pockets are the ones with momentum. The national number is real, but it does not land evenly, and your zip code matters more than the country-wide average when you set your price.

Two Years After the NAR Settlement

Looking at it two years after the NAR settlement. If you are not familiar, there was a lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors and a few other organizations about how agent commission structure was not negotiable the way it should be. Now there are a lot of different rules. Where it affects a buyer most: if you want to look at real estate, even house number one, and it is not an open house, you are going to have to have an agent take you, and that agent is going to have you sign a contract first.

If you go out with an agent and they are not having you sign a contract before you look at a property, they are breaking the rules. And if they are willing to break the rules before they have even bought you dinner, that is probably a problem anyway. The contract establishes who is paying what. If you do not want to pay your buyer's agent's commission, you do not have to, that is part of the deal, but you might not find someone to show you homes, and in some cases the seller is not going to pay it either, so have a backup plan.

On the ground out here, honestly, it does not seem like much has changed in the actual commission positions. There are fixed fees and flat fees out there, and you can find them in different places online. But for buyers it is more forward facing now, the reality that you might have to pay your agent to represent you. I do not represent buyers anymore. I did that for 21 years, and for the past several I have been sellers only. The deeper breakdown for sellers is in how buyer-broker agreements affect sellers and buyer-agent commission after the settlement.

The Zillow and Redfin Private Listing Ban

This one is interesting, and it is a consumer-facing issue most people have not heard about. The Zillow and Redfin private listing ban goes live June 30. Zillow's ban on listings that were publicly marketed and then kept as private exclusives takes full effect that day, and one analyst, Mike DelPrete, estimated roughly 7,000 Compass private listings get pulled from Zillow.

Here is the game. You have real estate brokers trying to capture as much market as they can. Different companies started saying, if our agent gets a listing, we are just going to propagate it on our own website. So if you follow Realtor.com, or Zillow, or Santa Clarita open houses, or whatever it is, you are not going to see that listing. They keep it out of the MLS, privatize it, and only put it on their own site.

That means fewer eyeballs for sellers, and fewer buyers able to find those listings. They will also probably force a buyer to register. I have not tested every site, but more than likely you will have to give up your personal and private information so it can be sold, and if it is an exclusive listing there is probably some regulation on how you even view the property, maybe a pre-approval letter or proof of funds. That is not unusual on its own. But handing your wherewithal to strangers you are not even intent on hiring, just to see a house, that is a shame. It is not good for the public and it is not good for the consumer.

For my sellers the takeaway is simple. Maximum exposure on the open market is how you get the most money. A private pocket listing benefits the brokerage's control, not your bottom line. When somebody pitches you on a quiet, exclusive, off-market sale, your first question should be, how does limiting who sees my home help me get the highest price. Usually it does not.

Insurance Is Now a Closing Risk

The California insurance crisis is now an affordability crisis. Average California homeowner premiums rose about 84 percent from the end of 2020 to March 2026. Eighty-four percent. Gas has not even risen 84 percent. And it is not just price. The FAIR plan, which is the coverage of last resort, now covers about 5 percent of single family homes, up from around 1.5 percent in 2020, and it backs roughly 6 percent of new mortgage originations. More than one in 17 new California home loans is written with the most limited, most expensive coverage as the only option. Stanford researchers say the crisis is spreading beyond wildfire country.

Out here we see this happen with home sales where you would never think there would be an insurance problem. It is not in the middle of a forest. It is a tract home. But it happens, and I hate to even say it this way, it seems like if they can get it, they are going to take it. It is not about a fair fixed fee for coverage. It is about whatever they can charge. What a shame.

So if you are buying a house, or even selling one, we have to have the insurance conversation early. If you have had the same insurance company for a thousand years, they might not be writing policies out here in California anymore. That can cut into a buyer's ability to purchase your residence, and then they have to look at their own coverage too. It used to be you could wait until the end of escrow to get insurance, it took a day or two. Now it is longer because of the pricing and the underwriting.

Here is the move. Get the insurance coverage looked at right at the very beginning, immediately when your offer gets accepted. Start making calls that day. Sometimes the agent has to do more than run it through the machine, they might have to send someone out to look at the neighborhood, so it can take a few days, and then a little more after that to assemble the package. In the Santa Clarita Valley especially, insurance is definitely a closing risk. It is not the don't-worry-you-will-find-it world anymore. Watch out for it. The hazard-disclosure side of this is in the natural hazard disclosure guide for sellers.

Santa Clarita Market Snapshot

Here is the local read. We do see some mild cooling. The median sale price is about 799,000 dollars overall, and Valencia runs higher than that. Over the last three months we are down roughly 2 percent year over year. Inventory is about 310 homes, single family up around 2.1 percent from last year, which is still tight, somewhere in that two-and-a-half to three months range. Homes are selling at about 99 percent of asking in roughly 45 days.

It is going to depend on the area, the pricing strategy, and the marketing and advertising. That last one is a big deal and most sellers underweight it. Two identical homes, same street, can land 30 days and several thousand dollars apart purely on how they are priced and presented. That is the part I control for my sellers, and it is the part the listing-fee percentage never actually pays for.

One Fixed Fee, Sellers Only

When you are ready, reach out. SellersOnlyAgent.com, ConnorWithHonor.com, of course, or I would not have gotten the shirt made. I represent sellers only, 100 percent on the seller's side, no dual-agency conflict. No buyer-side favors to pay back, no other agents to keep happy. If you need a buyer's agent I am happy to refer you to my network, but never on a listing I am selling for a seller.

And the work to sell a 500,000 dollar home and a 1.5 million dollar home is the same work. Same marketing, same negotiation, same problem-solving, same insurance landmines to defuse and the same pocket-listing pressure to resist. So the fee is the same, a flat 17,000 dollars, with every other cost that touches your equity, escrow, title, vendor charges, examined and negotiated. That is the model. The daily AI breakdowns and the wider market live over on the Daily Download, and you can watch this full read on YouTube here. I have got a new camera, so I am practicing. See you in the next one.