What Mountain View's Condo and Townhome Median Actually Measures
In August 2026, Mountain View's condo and townhome median sale price was $985,000. In August 2025 it was $1,624,000. On paper that's a 39% drop in a year. If attached homes in Mountain View had really lost that much value, people would be talking about little else. Price per square foot tells a much smaller story. It went from $1,000 in August 2025 to $896 in August 2026, according to the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors' monthly city tables.
That's a decline of roughly 10%. The rest of the gap is a change in which homes closed. In Mountain View, "condo and townhome" covers two different products that sell for different amounts. The monthly median swings depending on which of them closed that month. And the reason one of them is so much scarcer has a lot to do with how builders manage their legal risk.
The city did the math itself. In a December 2025 analysis covered by the Mountain View Voice, a two-bedroom condo in Mountain View averaged $972,000, and a two-bedroom rowhome or townhouse averaged $1.3 million. Same bedroom count, about a $330,000 difference, and both land in the same "Condo & Townhome" row of the county report.
So August 2026's $985,000 median sits almost exactly at the city's average two-bedroom condo price. August 2025's $1,624,000 was above even the two-bedroom rowhome average. Whether one month's handful of closings leans toward stacked flats or toward three-story rowhomes moves the median more than any real change in value.
The sample sizes are small enough for that to happen. Mountain View had 21 attached closings in August 2026 and 24 in August 2025. With so few sales, swapping a few rowhomes for a few flats can shift the midpoint by six figures.
| Mountain View condo & townhome | Median price | Median $/sq ft | Closed sales | Active inventory | % of list received |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2025 | $1,624,000 | $1,000 | 24 | 37 | 104% |
| June 2026 | $1,436,875 | $937 | 24 | 65 | 103% |
| July 2026 | $1,375,000 | $994 | 18 | 58 | 103% |
| August 2026 | $985,000 | $896 | 21 | 47 | 102% |
Look at July to August 2026. The median fell about 28% in one month while price per square foot fell about 10%. The average sale price also held up better than the median. In August 2026 it was $1,115,822, down about 26% from $1,502,791 a year earlier. The median dropped further than either. When the median moves much more than price per square foot, the likely explanation is that smaller homes made up more of what sold.
The 10% per-foot decline is still real, and other measures point the same way. Sale-to-list slipped from 104% to 102% year over year, and active inventory rose from 37 to 47. Attached homes in Mountain View cooled somewhat over the year. They just didn't cool as much as the headline median suggests.
The same mix problem runs the other way for houses. Mountain View's single-family median was $2,550,000 in August 2026, compared with $2,573,800 in August 2025, so it looks flat. Over the same period, median price per square foot went from $1,632 to $1,770, up about 8%. Smaller houses sold for more per foot. The flat median hides that.
The two markets also moved at different speeds in August 2026. Single-family homes closed at 107% of list price, with an average of 9 days on market and 13 active listings. Attached homes closed at 102% of list, with an average of 33 days and 47 listings. MLSListings put August inventory at 0.9 months for houses and 2.2 months for condos and townhomes. It reported a median of 8 days on market for attached homes. The two sources measure days on market differently, one as a median and one as an average. Read together, they suggest a typical attached listing still goes in about a week, while a smaller group sits long enough to pull the average past a month.
For a buyer, that long tail matters. It's where attached-home negotiations actually happen in Mountain View, and it's usually not visible from a single median.
You might expect builders to make more of the cheaper product. In Mountain View they mostly haven't. The Voice has reported that the city hasn't seen much condominium construction because developers have generally preferred rowhouses and townhomes. Those cost buyers more and produce fewer units per site. Construction costs and insurance are part of the reason. So is a California law that protects buyers from paying to fix defects in newly built homes.
Council member Pat Showalter put it this way at the December 2025 meeting:
"It does seem like every time you talk to a builder about condos, construction liability is the first or second thing out of their mouth."
A developer said the same thing in April 2026, when the city approved Castro Commons, GPR Ventures' 140-condo project at Castro Street and El Camino Real. Glen Yonekura, GPR's co-founder and managing principal, said the project needed the option to rent first. He pointed to California's 10-year condo liability law, which doesn't apply to rented apartments, and said it was making construction loans for condos hard to get. So even approved condos may reach the market as rentals before any of them are offered for sale.
That's the reason the August median can fall so far without a crash. True condos are a thin slice of Mountain View's for-sale stock. When a few of them close in the same month, the median drops toward condo pricing. When a few rowhomes close instead, it jumps back up. The city has also reported that about 60% of Mountain View's housing units are rentals and 40% are ownership units, which is the reverse of most cities. That leaves less resale stock to smooth out the numbers.
The current pipeline follows the same pattern. Rowhome projects have clearer paths. Condo projects come with more conditions.
Rowhomes
Condos
Gamel Way isn't fully cleared. Murdock wrote that the project can't proceed until City Council separately approves vacating the Gamel Way street and easements. The city's project page lists that hearing as "TBD."
The city is trying to tilt the mix. In December 2025 the council backed a homeownership strategy for households earning up to 200% of area median income, with a specific focus on encouraging condominiums. In February 2026, city leaders discussed studying higher floor-area ratios in parts of the R3 zoning district to encourage stacked flats over rowhouses. The city's own analysis found that a couple at 200% of area median income could afford a home up to about $1.07 million. That buys a typical two-bedroom condo but falls short of a typical two-bedroom rowhome. The city is effectively steering toward the scarcer product.
Since the blended median mostly tracks the mix of what sold, a more useful comparison takes a few steps:
The median did, from $1,624,000 in August 2025 to $985,000 in August 2026. Median price per square foot fell about 10% over the same period, from $1,000 to $896. That points to smaller homes making up more of August's 21 closings, plus a more modest real softening.
Not in the monthly county tables. SCCAOR and MLSListings both combine them into one condo-and-townhome category, so sorting comps by product type has to be done one sale at a time.
As of Sept. 21, 2026, City Council had not scheduled its vote on vacating the street, and the project can't proceed without that vote. No construction timeline has been confirmed.
If you're deciding between a stacked flat and a rowhome in Mountain View, it helps to see recent sales broken out by building type and price per square foot before you set a budget or an offer. Jerylann Mateo can put that comparison together for the specific streets and projects you're looking at, so your offer is based on what that kind of home actually sells for. Let's Connect.
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