Sweet Escape: Realtor.com®'s June Luxury Housing Report Maps America's Vacation-Home Hot Spots

National luxury prices fell for a 27th consecutive month in June, even as homes in every price tier continued to sell faster than a year ago

AUSTIN, Texas, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- More than half of the housing stock in Nantucket, Mass., is set aside for vacation or seasonal use, the highest concentration of any luxury market in the country. That level of scarcity is shaping how vacation-driven luxury markets price, separately from the national trend, according to the Realtor.com^® June 2026 Luxury Housing Report released today.

Nationally, the entry point to luxury slipped to $1,277,907 in June, down 1.7% year over year and marking the 27th straight month of annual declines. The pace of decline widened from May's 1.4% drop, breaking from a recent trend of narrowing annual losses. Even so, luxury homes kept selling faster than they did a year ago across every price tier: the top 10% of listings sold in a median of 63 days, two days faster than June 2025, while the top 1% improved by three days over the same period.

"While the national luxury price is cooling somewhat, in vacation towns like Nantucket, Mass., and Breckenridge, Colo., that doesn't matter much," said Anthony Smith, Senior Economist at Realtor.com^®. "Buyers there aren't paying for square footage. They're paying for a place that can't be reproduced anywhere else. You can't manufacture more coastline or more mountain. That's a different kind of market, built on a different kind of scarcity."

National Luxury Overview — June 2026

To find where luxury buyers go to get away, Realtor.com^® turned to Census Bureau data from the 2020-2024 American Community Survey, measuring what share of each metro and micropolitan area's housing stock is reserved for seasonal or occasional use. Markets were ranked by that share, limited to areas with at least 100 million-dollar listings in June. Nationally, just 3.3% of the housing stock falls into this category, a baseline that makes the concentration in the country's top vacation markets stand out even more.

Highest Share of Vacation Homes

(Among areas with at least 100 million-dollar listings in June 2026 and at least 25% vacation-home share.)

Nantucket topped the list at 55.0%, followed closely by Vineyard Haven, Mass., at 54.4%. Both islands sit at roughly 17 times the national vacation-home share, and both qualify as Pure Luxury Markets, where even the median home price surpasses the national luxury threshold. Breckenridge rounded out the top three at 45.8%, the highest share among the mountain destinations on the list.

Vacation concentration and price size don't move together. Nantucket carries the steepest entry point on the list to its top 10% of listings, at $14,117,250, yet the median home in its $1 million to $2 million range measures just 1,011 square feet, the smallest of any market analyzed. Hailey, Idaho, shows a similar pattern: a median listing price of $1,299,750 sits alongside a top-10% threshold of $9,655,000, pointing to a thin but extreme luxury tier layered on top of a far more modest broader market. In these markets, buyers are paying for scarcity and setting rather than square footage.

Geographically, the list splits between coastal destinations, including Nantucket, Vineyard Haven, Mass.; Barnstable Town, Mass.; and Naples-Marco Island, Fla., and mountain retreats such as Breckenridge, Heber, Utah and Hailey, Idaho, with Petoskey, Mich., representing lakeside markets. Naples-Marco Island is the only metro to appear on both this list and among the 10 most expensive luxury markets in the country, where its entry point to the top 10% rose 4.1% year over year, the only annual gain among that group. That overlap makes Naples something of an outlier. Most of the country's priciest luxury markets, like Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury, Conn., which held the top spot for a second straight month at $4.2 million, down 4.4% from a year ago, are drawing on urban and financial-center demand rather than vacation appeal. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif., saw the steepest annual decline of the group, down 11.7%.

"Most of the country's priciest luxury markets are chasing something different than these vacation towns," said Smith. "Bridgeport, Conn., and Los Angeles are proxies for financial wealth. Meanwhile, Nantucket, Mass., and Breckenridge, Colo., are proxies for escape. They all just happen to land in the same price bracket."

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif., tells the same story from a different direction. The metro returned to the top 10 most expensive list this month after Santa Rosa-Petaluma, Calif., fell below the 500-listing threshold used to qualify for the ranking, and some market watchers have pointed to equity gains among Bay Area tech workers as a possible source of renewed demand at the high end, even as pricing across the broader metro remains down 6.9% from a year ago. It is a different kind of premium than the one driving Nantucket or Breckenridge: wealth creation rather than scarcity of place, but it lands in the same luxury tier.

As the broader luxury market continues to cool, that same split between wealth-driven and scarcity-driven demand may only grow more visible, particularly in markets where supply has little room left to expand.

Methodology
All data in this report is sourced from Realtor.com^® listing trends as of June 2026, reflecting active inventory of existing homes, including single-family residences, condos, townhomes, row homes, and co-ops. Listings reflect only those provided by MLS platforms to Realtor.com^® via a listing feed. New-construction listings are excluded unless actively listed on participating MLSs.

Luxury segmentation is based on market-specific price percentiles, with the 90th percentile representing entry-level luxury, the 95th percentile marking high-end luxury, and the 99th percentile indicating ultraluxury. All calculations are based on listing prices, not final sales prices.

Metropolitan and micropolitan areas are defined using the Office of Management and Budget's OMB-2023 delineations, with Claritas 2025 household estimates used for relative comparisons. Where appropriate, we limited analysis to metros or micros with a minimum threshold of active million-dollar listings on average over the past year to ensure meaningful comparisons.

Historical listing trend data extends to July 2016, but year-over-year comparisons in this report use June 2025 as the baseline.

Luxury by the Numbers
90th percentile = Entry-level luxury (top 10% of prices)
95th percentile = High-end luxury
99th percentile = Ultraluxury (often rare or custom properties)

About Realtor.com^®
For over 30 years, Realtor.com^® has connected buyers, sellers, and renters with trusted insights, professional guidance and powerful tools to help them find their perfect home. Recognized as the No. 1 real estate site REALTOR® agents recommend, Realtor.com^® delivers consumer connections and a robust suite of marketing tools to support business growth. Realtor.com^® is operated by News Corp [Nasdaq: NWS, NWSA] [ASX: NWS, NWSLV] subsidiary Move, Inc.

Media contact: Emily Do, [email protected] 

SOURCE Realtor.com