First half is in the books.
Prices surged to close out Q2.

Where prices ran — and why schools always win.

The region-wide median is up 4.6%. That's a solid number. But averages are where the interesting data goes to die. Break it down by city and a clear pattern emerges: the biggest price surges in Q2 2026 happened in markets with the best schools, the most distinctive neighborhoods, and the kind of community pride that you either get or you don't.

Piedmont is up 47% year-over-year. Montclair is up 40% after a couple of years of declining prices. Albany is up 19.3%. Kensington up 27.1%. Every one of these markets carries a common thread: buyers who are done compromising on their kids' education, and are putting their money where their values are.

The city-by-city breakdown is in the table below. Two stories deserve their own space: Piedmont's surge is being driven by something bigger than local demand, and Montclair's comeback is a signal that history watchers in the East Bay can't afford to ignore.

Piedmont is up 47%.
AI money is probably why.

A 47% year-over-year jump in median sold price is the kind of number that demands a root cause — not just a market narrative. Here's the chain as I see it: the AI boom has generated an extraordinary concentration of new wealth in the Bay Area. IPOs, liquidity events, stock vesting at companies that have gone from startups to the most valuable in the world — a new class of buyer has emerged with the means to shop at the very top of the market. They want estates. San Francisco doesn't have enough of them. That's the shortage. And Piedmont is where the overflow lands.

The SF Standard and The Real Deal have both covered what's being called a "mansion shortage" in SF's luxury market this year — Pac Heights properties drawing multiple offers above $50 million, inventory at historic lows for the trophy tier. The shortage isn't a cause; it's a symptom of demand that the city simply cannot absorb. When that buyer can't find what they want across the Bay, they start looking east.

What they find in Piedmont is something San Francisco's luxury market increasingly cannot offer: actual space. Estates on generous lots, rooms designed for living, garages that fit real cars, and a school district that doesn't require a private school backup plan. And then they see the price — and something interesting happens.

Piedmont looks cheap. A Grubb Company analysis of the 20 most expensive Bay Area cities ranked by median sale price (Jan–May 2026) puts Piedmont at #17 with a $3M median. Atherton sits at #1 with a $15.4M median. Belvedere, Hillsborough, Woodside, Los Altos Hills — all significantly higher. For the buyer who has been shopping Pac Heights and the Peninsula, Piedmont doesn't just look attractive. It looks like an arbitrage opportunity.

The question worth asking: is Piedmont structurally undervalued relative to its Bay Area peers? The schools are elite. The architecture is exceptional. The land is constrained — Piedmont is fully built out, there are no new lots. And yet it sits near the floor of the Bay Area luxury tier. If AI wealth continues compressing downward through the luxury market — and there's no sign it's stopping — Piedmont may be the next city that gets "discovered" in the way Atherton and Hillsborough were a generation ago.

45 homes sold in Piedmont this spring, up 50% in volume year-over-year. 91% sold over asking. The data is already making the case.

Montclair's back. And if you know
the East Bay, that matters a lot.

A couple of years ago, Montclair was a cautionary tale. Buyers were spooked — fire risk in the hills, insurance carriers bailing out of California, State Farm and Allstate pulling back from WUI zones. The market felt the chill. Prices slid. Volume dried up. The neighborhood that had always commanded a premium was suddenly getting the discount-rack treatment.

This spring, Montclair posted a 40% year-over-year price increase. What happened?

A few things, probably in combination. Insurance carriers have been quietly re-entering the California market — enough that the existential dread has softened. But I think the bigger driver is simpler: buyers ran out of patience. The families who were watching Montclair from the sidelines, waiting for the fire risk narrative to resolve, have kids. Those kids are approaching school age. And Montclair's schools haven't gotten any worse. At some point the calculus flips — the risk of not buying starts to outweigh the risk of buying — and buyers who've been holding move all at once.

Here's why this matters beyond Montclair: in the East Bay, we treat Montclair as the canary in the coal mine. It's historically first to fall and first to surge. When Montclair plummets, the inner East Bay follows. When Montclair runs, the rest of the hills — and then the flatlands — tend to follow. If historical patterns hold, we're in the early innings of a broader inner East Bay surge.

And the data is already whispering as much. Albany is up 19.3% — 100% of homes sold over asking last year, still 81% this year with significantly more sales. Kensington up 27.1%. Crocker Highlands with 100% of homes selling over ask this spring. All standout school districts. All the same pattern: buyers who have identified what they can't compromise on, and have stopped waiting.

We joined the bridgeMLS board.

Last month, D.J. Grubb and I were both appointed to the Board of Directors of the Bridge Association of REALTORS — the organization behind bridgeMLS, the cooperative listing service for the East Bay (and the source of the data in this newsletter).

The short version of why: the MLS is the shared system that puts your home in front of every buyer, and keeping that marketplace open and competitive is good for the people who live here. There's more to say on what that means for you — stay tuned.

Because there's more to life than square footage.