Why Can't Anyone Agree on Old Las Palmas' Median Home Price?

Pull four different market reports on Old Las Palmas this year and you get four different numbers. One puts the median at $4.2 million. Another lands near $2.76 million. A third comes in at $2.44 million. A fourth gives a range of $2.3 million to $2.9 million. These aren't old figures being compared to new ones. They cover overlapping months of the same year, in the same roughly 290-home neighborhood at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains.

The disagreement isn't a data error. It's the story.

Four Snapshots, One Neighborhood

Old Las Palmas sells so few homes in a given month that the word "median" barely holds together. One tracker counted just six closed sales in April 2026, up from two the year before. When a neighborhood's entire month of transactions could fit in a single open house, one estate sale or one distressed teardown swings the median by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here's what four separate 2026 snapshots actually measured:

None of these numbers is wrong. They're measuring different things: closed transactions versus asking prices versus a rolling annual estimate. In a neighborhood with hundreds of monthly sales, those methodologies converge close enough to matter. In one with six sales a month, they don't converge at all.

The outliers make it worse. The former home of philanthropist Harold Matzner sits at the top of the neighborhood and was reported by the Desert Sun to be for sale at $19.5 million. The report also noted that every home listed in the neighborhood topped $1.9 million. A single sale at either end of that range reshapes the median for the whole quarter.

If you're comparing Old Las Palmas to Movie Colony or Vista Las Palmas using a single median number, you're comparing noise. The more useful signal in this neighborhood right now isn't a price. It's two structural decisions playing out in real time.

A $10.1 Million Bet on Buried Wires

In August, Hoodline reported that the Palm Springs City Council preliminarily approved the engineer's reports for two Old Las Palmas underground utility assessment districts. The Palm Springs Post reports that a public hearing and ballot count are scheduled for October 28. If the vote passes, homeowners in the neighborhood will collectively fund $10.1 million in work to bury the overhead power, telephone and cable lines running through their streets. Individual assessments range from about $82,000 to $171,000 per parcel, weighted by lot size, with ballots themselves weighted the same way, so owners facing the largest bills carry the most say in the outcome.

Property owners can pay in cash or finance the balance through a bond over as long as 20 years, plus an annual administrative fee of up to $88 per parcel that rises with inflation. Even after the main lines go underground, each homeowner still has to hire a private contractor to connect their own house to the new system, a cost the assessment itself doesn't cover.

Chuck Nourrcier, the Old Las Palmas resident who has led the undergrounding push, put it plainly to the Desert Sun: "The bottom line is I think everybody is very excited about getting this done." Residents cite two reasons, both tied directly to the property itself: wildfire risk from wind-driven power line failures, and the fact that some buyers won't look at a house if it has visible wires overhead.

This isn't a city beautification project funded by taxpayers broadly. It's a neighborhood voting to spend its own money on infrastructure it believes will show up in resale value. The Racquet Club Estates Neighborhood Organization is watching how the vote and construction play out before deciding whether to pursue its own district, which tells you Old Las Palmas isn't an isolated case. It's the test case.

If you're evaluating a home here, the assessment vote matters more than any median. A property inside District 1 or District 2 carries a known future cost. That's a fact you can underwrite. A citywide median is not.

The Twelve Tests What Buyers Will Pay for a Different Kind of Ownership

Old Las Palmas is also getting its first new construction in decades. The Twelve at Old Las Palmas is a 12-unit development near Palm Canyon Drive, with Phase 1 units running three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms across 2,245 square feet, a private elevator, and at least one unit with its own cocktail pool. Asking prices for Phase 1 run from roughly $2 million to $2.495 million. Phase 2 floor plans and pricing haven't been released yet, and the reporting available doesn't establish what monthly homeowners association dues will run or what they'll cover.

The project sits in a stretch of North Palm Canyon Drive that's also seeing senior housing and boutique hospitality development, part of a broader shift in what gets built along that corridor.

What makes The Twelve worth watching isn't the finishes. It's the pricing bet. A neighborhood historically defined by large private lots and estate-scale privacy is now offering a lower-maintenance, more compact product at prices that sit close to entry-level detached homes in the same zip code. Citywide, Palm Springs homes were selling in an average of 70 days as of June 2026, with roughly 479 homes sold that month, a modestly busier pace than the same month a year earlier. That's a market with room to negotiate, not one running hot. The Twelve is asking whether buyers will still pay a premium for the Old Las Palmas name on a product that isn't the estate lot the neighborhood built its reputation on.

Before You Fall for the Architecture, Know the Paperwork

Old Las Palmas has one of the highest concentrations of historically designated homes in Palm Springs, and that designation comes with real conditions. Under the city's Municipal Code Chapter 8.05, adopted in 1984, any exterior demolition or alteration to a Class 1 or Class 2 historic resource requires a Certificate of Appropriateness before the city will issue a building or zoning permit. Interior modifications are exempt, and repainting is exempt if the new color matches what's there or existed historically. Everything else, including changes to rooflines, window replacements, or altered facades, goes through the city's Historic Site Preservation Board, a seven-member body that meets the first Tuesday of each month.

That review process is a real timeline consideration if you're buying a designated home with renovation plans. It's worth understanding before you write an offer, not after.

There's an upside to the designation too. The city's Mills Act Contract Program offers a property tax incentive for owners who commit to maintaining a historic property, and the city recently resumed accepting applications after updating its submission process. It's a real financial consideration for anyone comparing a designated Old Las Palmas home to a non-designated one elsewhere in the valley, worth discussing directly with the city's Historic Preservation Officer before you assume either way.

A Few Straight Answers

Does the underground utility assessment affect every home in the neighborhood, or just some? It applies to parcels within the two approved district boundaries, not the entire neighborhood. If you're looking at a specific property, ask whether it falls inside District 1 or District 2 and what its individual assessment would be.

Is every home in Old Las Palmas historically designated? No. The neighborhood has a high concentration of Class 1 and Class 2 historic resources, but not every property carries that status. Designation status is worth confirming directly with the listing agent or the city's Historic Resources office before you plan any exterior work.

If the assessment vote passes on October 28, when does construction actually start? Design work is expected to take 12 to 18 months after approval before undergrounding construction begins, according to reporting on the project timeline.

Old Las Palmas doesn't need a single tidy median to make its case. The neighborhood is voting on $10.1 million of its own infrastructure, testing a new housing product at estate-adjacent prices, and operating under a historic preservation process that shapes what you can and can't do with the house once you own it. Those are the numbers worth understanding before you make an offer here.

If you're weighing a purchase in Old Las Palmas and want a straight read on assessment districts, historic designation status, or how a specific property compares to what's actually selling, Marco Colantonio can walk through the details property by property.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.