Del Rey Oaks Home Prices Depend on Which Two Houses Just Sold

Pull up three different sources on Del Rey Oaks home prices this year and you will get three different markets. One says the city's median sale price sits just under a million dollars. Another says it dropped to the low $700,000s. A third, reading eight months earlier, said it had jumped 45.8 percent year over year to $1.1 million. None of these numbers are wrong. They are all measuring the same tiny city, and that is the actual problem.

Del Rey Oaks has roughly 741 homes total. In a market that size, a monthly "median" is not really a market signal. It is a snapshot of whichever two or three houses happened to close that month, and the number moves as much as the houses do.

What the numbers actually looked like this year

In June 2026, MLSListings recorded a citywide median sale price of $971,500 for Del Rey Oaks single-family homes, built from exactly two closed sales, with a median of 34 days on market and a 98 percent sale-to-list ratio. One month later, Movoto's July 2026 snapshot put the citywide asking median at $744,000, describing it as a 12 percent drop from June. Go back further, to December 2025, and Redfin's read on the same city showed a median sale price of $1.1 million, up 45.8 percent from the year before.

Three snapshots inside a seven-month window, three medians that differ by hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you are used to reading Monterey or Seaside numbers, where dozens of homes trade every month and the median settles into something you can trust, this looks broken. It is not broken. It is just what happens when the underlying pool of sales is this small.

The zip code makes it worse

Del Rey Oaks shares zip code 93940 with a large piece of Monterey. That means any statistic reported at the zip level, rather than the city level, is quietly blending two different markets. MLSListings' own zip-level report for 93940 in June 2026 showed a median sale price of $1,230,000, up 1.6 percent year over year, with 47 active listings and 22 closed sales that month. Compare that to the city-level figure from the same source and same month: $971,500 on two sales.

Both numbers came from the same data provider in the same 30-day window. One describes a city of 741 homes. The other describes a zip code that includes much of Monterey's larger housing stock. If you see a Del Rey Oaks price quoted from a zip-code search rather than a city-specific one, you are looking at Monterey's market wearing a Del Rey Oaks label.

What is actually stable here

The part of this market that does hold steady is the housing stock itself, and it tells you more than any monthly median. Homes in Del Rey Oaks were built predominantly in the 1950s through the 1970s, with a mid-century character: flat roofs, angular lines, open-beam ceilings showing up in listing after listing. The city's most recent housing element, the planning document every California city files with the state, confirms that essentially no new housing units were added after 2000. This is a closed inventory. What exists today is close to what will exist for the foreseeable future, aside from a cluster of condos on the east side of town known as The Oaks.

That closed-stock reality changes how you should read price per square foot instead of median price. MLSListings' June 2026 city figure put median price per square foot at $800 on the two homes that sold. The 93940 zip figure for the same month, again diluted by Monterey inventory, showed $718 per square foot for single-family homes. Neither number is meaningless, but both need the caveat attached: small samples, blended geographies. The way to use price per square foot here is to ask your agent for the trailing 12 months of actual closed comparables inside city limits, not a single month's snapshot from any portal.

Because the lot stock is fixed, the other lever homeowners have is adding square footage rather than buying new construction, since there is none. Del Rey Oaks processes accessory dwelling unit applications ministerially, meaning the city must act on a compliant application within 60 days. For a buyer eyeing a smaller mid-century home on a larger lot, that ADU pathway is a real and current way to add value in a city where new subdivisions are not coming.

The value driver that isn't priced into any of these numbers yet

None of the median-price snapshots above account for the single biggest physical change happening in Del Rey Oaks right now: the Canyon Del Rey segment of the Fort Ord Regional Trail and Greenway, known locally as FORTAG. The Transportation Agency for Monterey County secured a $10.3 million state grant in 2019 to fund this 1.5-mile paved segment, which runs through Work Memorial Park and Del Rey Park, under State Route 218 near the Frog Pond Wetland Preserve, and on to Del Rey Woods Elementary School in Seaside.

Construction began in August 2024 and has been running on a projected two-year build, with completion targeted for late summer or fall 2026. As of this month, the city's own construction bulletin lists an active FORTAG update for the week of August 3, 2026, including night work scheduled for August 2 and 3. That same week, the city separately closed South Boundary Road for Cal Fire vegetation mitigation, a distinct project running Monday through Friday, August 3 through 7. Two active construction efforts, same month, same small city.

Once finished, the trail gives Del Rey Oaks something it has never had: a paved, protected walking and biking connection linking the neighborhood directly to Seaside and to the Frog Pond preserve. That kind of infrastructure typically shows up in home values with a lag, after it opens and residents start using it daily, not while it is still under construction. Anyone evaluating Del Rey Oaks against Monterey or Seaside right now is pricing a city that is about to look meaningfully different on the ground than it does in this year's sales data.

What this means if you are actually shopping here

If you are comparing Del Rey Oaks to its neighbors, treat every headline median you find with the same question: how many sales is this built on, and is it measuring the city or the zip code? A few practical habits help:

• Ask for the trailing 12 months of closed sales inside Del Rey Oaks city limits specifically, not the 93940 zip.
• Weight price per square foot on comparable homes over the single-month median, since one or two outlier sales can swing the median by six figures.
• Factor in the closed housing stock. If new construction isn't coming, ADU potential on a larger lot is one of the few ways to add real space here.
• Track the FORTAG completion timeline yourself. A trail that connects your street to Seaside and the Frog Pond preserve is worth understanding before it finishes, not after.

A couple of questions worth settling directly

Does the 12-day median days-on-market figure from the 93940 zip mean homes in Del Rey Oaks itself sell that fast? No. That 12-day figure comes from MLSListings' zip-level report, which blends in Monterey's much larger and more active inventory. The city-level figure for the same month, June 2026, showed a 34-day median built from just two sales.

Is Del Rey Oaks priced closer to Monterey or to Seaside? Based on the data available, it sits in between, though with a sample this small the honest answer is that it depends heavily on which specific homes trade in a given month. The zip-level median of $1,230,000 in June 2026 reflects Monterey's larger market bleeding into the number, not Del Rey Oaks alone.

Small markets reward buyers and sellers who look past the headline number and into the mechanics behind it. If you are weighing Del Rey Oaks against Monterey, Seaside, or another Peninsula city and want someone to walk through the actual comparable sales rather than a portal snapshot, Ben Ottmar is a call away. Get in Touch.