The Laguna Beach housing market is still one of the slowest on this coast, and it is speeding up faster than any of them.

Reading the Split

The clock is shortening, and the top of the market is giving ground.

Start with the pace. Laguna Beach needs about 213 days to clear the homes currently for sale, two and a half times San Clemente's 84 days and second only to Newport Coast's 223 on this stretch of coast. That figure is expected market time, which counts everything still sitting rather than only what sold; I make the full case for it on the San Clemente page.

The part that gets missed is the direction. A year ago that same number was 297 days. Laguna has taken 84 days off its clock while Dana Point added 59 and Newport Beach added 54. It got there by shedding inventory rather than by adding buyers: 149 active listings against 208 a year ago, a 28 percent drop, with demand flat at 21 pendings. Fewer homes competing for the same buyers is a real improvement, just a quieter one than a demand surge.

Then there is the split inside town, and it flipped from the summer. In September, the 21 homes that closed under five million dollars took a median of 59 days and settled at 95.0 percent of list. The five that closed above five million took a median of 87 days and settled at 84.2 percent of list. In July that upper tier waited far longer, a median of 226 days, and then closed at 99.4 percent. Five sales is a small sample and one deep discount moves it, so I would not call it a trend yet. It does say buyers at the top are negotiating this fall, and a Laguna seller above five million should know which of those two months their pricing is built on.

The long view is the honest part. Laguna Beach values are up about 92 percent over the last ten years, the softest figure in this peer group against San Clemente's 118 percent and Newport Coast's 133 percent. That is less a knock on Laguna than a function of where it started: the town was already expensive a decade ago, and percentage growth is harder to come by from a high base. Year over year, values are still up 6.5 percent.

Seven Miles of Coves

Laguna is a dozen small markets wearing one name.

Laguna Beach is seven miles of coves, canyons and hillside between Crystal Cove and Dana Point, an art-colony town that never got subdivided into tract housing. It is not one market. Where a home sits, behind a gate on the north end, above the Village, or down in a cove, changes the buyer, the price, and the pace completely.

• North Laguna. The stretch closest to Crystal Cove, home to the gated enclaves of Emerald Bay, Irvine Cove and Smithcliffs. This is the top of the Laguna market and where the longest holding periods are.
• The Village. Downtown Laguna around Main Beach, Broadway and Forest Avenue, where the galleries, the festivals and the walkable restaurant row are. Lifestyle premium at its most concentrated.
• Woods Cove. A quiet, walkable pocket south of the Village with hidden coves and classic Laguna character, and one of the few places in town with genuinely mid-priced condos and smaller homes.
• Victoria Beach. The cove neighborhood known for its tide pools and the Pirate Tower, steep streets running down to one of the better swimming beaches in town.
• Three Arch Bay. A private gated community in South Laguna with its own beach, oceanfront and ocean-view homes, and very little turnover. Residents tend to stay a long time, which is why listings there are rare.
• Top of the World. The ridge above town with panoramic views across the coast and direct access to the Laguna Coast Wilderness trails. Views and hiking rather than sand.

Pick a cove and I will tell you how it has been trading. That is a far more useful conversation than anything a citywide figure can give you.