Three Tri-Valley Cities, Three Different Markets

For most of the last decade, you could talk about the Tri-Valley housing market as a single thing. Dublin, Pleasanton, and San Ramon moved together. If one heated up, the others followed within a quarter.

That stopped being true this summer.

The August 2026 data shows three cities within ten miles of each other running in different directions on the metrics that decide what a seller actually nets. Not slightly different. Opposite.

The numbers

All figures below come from Redfin's city-level market data, covering the trailing three months through August 2026, retrieved September 16, 2026. These reflect closed sales, not asking prices.

One deliberate omission: median sale price is not in this table. Different data providers report materially different medians for these cities in this period — for Pleasanton alone, published figures range from roughly $1.52M to $1.60M depending on the source. Medians are also the least useful number for a pricing decision, for reasons covered below. The metrics here — how homes actually closed relative to their list price — are consistent across the sources I checked.

Metric	Dublin	Pleasanton	San Ramon
Homes sold	170 (+19.9%)	137 (−22.8%)	164 (−8.8%)
Median days on market	29 (−5)	29 (+2)	22 (−4)
Sale-to-list ratio	98.9% (−0.79 pt)	99.2% (+0.9 pt)	99.5% (+0.8 pt)
Sold above list	29.6% (−8.5 pt)	32.1% (+3.5 pt)	39.4% (+10.5 pt)
Homes with price drops	29.6% (−1.7 pt)	34.9% (+5.6 pt)	35.1% (−1.7 pt)

A note on the “sold above list” row: trackers measure this differently, and other providers report Dublin anywhere from roughly 31% to 40% for this period against Redfin's 29.6%. Treat the year-over-year direction as the signal and the absolute level as approximate. The sale-to-list ratio, which is the more decision-relevant number here, is consistent across sources — Redfin, Realtor.com, and local brokerage reporting all put Dublin between 97.9% and 98.9%.

Dublin: more buyers, less bidding

Dublin moved 170 homes, up 19.9% from the same period last year, and did it five days faster. By volume and speed, it is the healthiest of the three.

Then look at how those sales closed. The sale-to-list ratio fell below 99% — meaning the average Dublin home now closes for slightly less than its list price. That is the firmest number in this article: Redfin puts it at 98.9%, Realtor.com at 98%, and local brokerage reporting at 97.9%. Three independent sources, same conclusion. The share of homes selling above asking moved down over the same stretch.

Both things are true at once, and they are not in conflict. There are plenty of buyers in Dublin. They are simply not competing for the same house. They are showing up, taking their time, and negotiating.

If you are selling in Dublin this fall, the practical consequence is that your list price is a ceiling, not a floor. Pricing above the comps to "leave room" does not create a bidding war here. It creates a price reduction six weeks later.

Pleasanton: the hardest market of the three

Pleasanton is the only city in the group where volume fell hard — 137 homes sold, down 22.8% year over year — while days on market moved the wrong way.

The number that matters most is price drops: 34.9% of Pleasanton listings cut their price, up 5.6 points from last year. More than a third of sellers in Pleasanton started at a number the market would not pay.

The encouraging counterpoint is that sale-to-list actually improved, to 99.2%. Read those two together and a clear picture emerges: Pleasanton homes that are priced correctly still sell close to asking. The ones that are not spend the fall chasing the market down.

Pleasanton is the city where getting the list price right on day one is worth the most money.

San Ramon: still genuinely competitive

San Ramon is the one city that looks like the market people remember. Sale-to-list is 99.5%, the strongest of the three and the only one that improved while holding above the group. Median days on market is 22, a full week faster than its neighbors. And the share of homes selling above asking rose year over year — the largest positive move of any metric across all three cities — while Dublin's fell.

Volume is down 8.8%, so fewer homes are trading. But the ones that do are meeting real competition.

The strategic read for a San Ramon seller is the inverse of Dublin: there is room to be ambitious on price, because there are still enough buyers willing to go over asking to make a competitive strategy work.

Why this matters more than the headline number

Most market coverage leads with the median sale price. It is the easiest number to report and the least useful one for deciding what to do.

The median tells you what mix of homes happened to sell. It does not tell you whether your home will attract competing offers, how long you should expect to wait, or what happens if you start $50,000 high.

Sale-to-list, above-list share, and price-drop share answer those questions. And those three metrics are precisely where the Tri-Valley has split apart:

• Dublin — sale-to-list below 99%, closing under asking on average, above-list share falling
• Pleasanton — price drops up 5.6 points, but disciplined pricing still holds 99.2%
• San Ramon — sale-to-list 99.5%, fastest of the three, above-list share rising

A pricing strategy built on "the Tri-Valley market" now averages three different markets into one number that describes none of them.

What to do with this

If you are planning to list this fall, three things follow directly from the data:

1. Price to your city, not the region. The same aggressive list price is reasonable in San Ramon and expensive in Dublin.
2. Treat the first two weeks as the whole negotiation. In every one of these cities, the homes that cut price are the ones that opened too high. Price-drop rates near a third are not a sign of a weak market; they are a sign of optimistic launches.
3. Use execution metrics, not medians, to set expectations. Ask what percentage of homes like yours sold above asking in your specific city in the last 90 days. That number, not the median, tells you whether to expect competition.

If you want to see what these numbers look like for your specific home and neighborhood, I put together a current market report for the area, and I am happy to walk through a pricing strategy with you directly. You can reach me here.

Sources

• Redfin, Dublin CA Housing Market — https://www.redfin.com/city/5159/CA/Dublin/housing-market (retrieved September 16, 2026)
• Redfin, Pleasanton CA Housing Market — https://www.redfin.com/city/14986/CA/Pleasanton/housing-market (retrieved September 16, 2026)
• Redfin, San Ramon CA Housing Market — https://www.redfin.com/city/17519/CA/San-Ramon/housing-market (retrieved September 16, 2026)
• Cross-checked against Realtor.com, Homes.com, and Zillow city-level data for the same period (retrieved September 16, 2026). Where sources disagreed, the disagreement is disclosed above rather than resolved silently.

Michael Katwan is a licensed California Broker Associate (DRE# 02168118) with Keller Williams Tri-Valley. He works with sellers, buyers, and landlords across the Tri-Valley, South Bay, and Peninsula.