13 Cities Where Buyers and Pockets Are Sitting On Top of Each Other
Monday’s brief walked through the mechanics of an off-market match. This one is the map.
Below is the actual state of the Who’s Got Pockets board as of this week: 47 open buyer needs and 36 pre-market properties, sorted by city. In 13 Orange County cities there is at least one of each — a live buyer and a live pocket, both sitting on the same board, often with neither agent aware of the other.
The overlap, city by city
| City | Open buyer needs | Pre-market properties |
|---|---|---|
| Dana Point | 9 | 2 |
| San Clemente | 4 | 6 |
| Huntington Beach | 5 | 1 |
| Newport Beach | 4 | 2 |
| Irvine | 3 | 3 |
| Corona del Mar | 2 | 2 |
| Costa Mesa | 2 | 1 |
| Laguna Hills | 2 | 1 |
| Laguna Niguel | 1 | 6 |
| Mission Viejo | 1 | 2 |
| San Juan Capistrano | 1 | 3 |
| Ladera Ranch | 1 | 1 |
| Other Orange County | 2 | 1 |
Three things worth noticing
Dana Point is the demand story. Nine open buyer needs, two pre-market properties. That is the widest gap on the board by a wide margin, and it spans everything from an all-cash duplex buyer with proof of funds ready to a single-family search under $1.1 million. If you have a Dana Point seller who is thinking about next spring, there are nine agents on this board with a reason to talk to you today.
Laguna Niguel is the mirror image. Six pre-market properties, one open buyer need. There is supply there looking for buyers, not the other way around. Same for San Clemente, where the pockets outnumber the needs six to four.
Laguna Beach has six buyers and zero pockets. It does not appear in the table above because there is nothing on the pre-market side to pair with — six agents with Laguna Beach buyers, several in the $4 million to $6 million range, and nothing on the board for them. If Laguna Beach is your farm, that is a standing invitation.
The number that should bother you
Ten. That is how many of the 47 open buyer needs have a structured price range filled in.
The other 37 came over from the Facebook group as free text. Another agent scrolling the board can read them perfectly well. The matching engine cannot — it needs a city, a property type, a bed count and a price band to fire an alert.
Which means for those 37, the buyer is only found if somebody happens to be looking at the board on the right day. That is a lot of leverage sitting unused.
What to do with this in the next ten minutes
- Find your city in the table. If your side of the column is the smaller number, you are the scarce half of that market this week.
- If you already have a buyer need posted, open it and fill in the price range and property type. Ninety seconds, and it moves you from “findable if someone scrolls” to “alerted automatically.”
- If your city is not in the table at all, you are first. Post it and every future match in that city routes to you.
The board is only as good as what is written on it. Right now there are 83 open items and 13 cities where two agents are one phone call apart.
Counts are from the Who’s Got Pockets Network board as of August 14, 2026, and include only posts their agents have consented to share. Stealth-lane posts are excluded by design. Both boards are free: see the buyer needs or post a pre-market property.
