And 28 were down from their peaks in prior years, led by Austin -27% and Oakland -25%.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Prices of mid-tier homes in June were down from their respective peaks in prior years in 28 of the 33 big and expensive cities we follow here, led by Austin (-27%), Oakland (-25%), New Orleans (-19%), Washington D.C. (-13%), Denver (-13%), Phoenix (-11%), Fort Worth (-10%), and Portland (-10%). All of the prices are seasonally adjusted.
Here’s is Austin. The charts and data for each of the 33 cities are further down.
In 17 of those 33 cities, the peaks were in 2022; in 9, the peaks were in 2024; and in 2 cities, the peaks were in early 2025 (Boston in April 2025 and San Jose in January 2025).
Year-over-year price declines occurred in 25 of the 33 cities, topped off by Austin (-5.0%), Oakland (-4.6%), Denver (-3.4%), Nashville (-3,3%), and Las Vegas (-3.1%).
Year-over-year price gains occurred in the remaining 8 cities, topped off by New York City (+3.8%), Chicago (+3.9%), and San Francisco (+9.5%).
San Francisco used to be near the top of the price decliners. But AI mania got a hold of the luxury housing market as super-highly paid people started chasing down expensive homes, triggering a “mansion shortage,” as it has been called locally, that last fall began trickling down into mid-tier home prices, and those mid-tier prices began to spike. Despite the spike, mid-tier home prices in June were still 8% below the all-time high of 2022. If AI mania lasts long enough, mid-tier prices could set a new high in the not-too-distant future for the first time since 2022.
By contrast, in San Jose, where mid-tier homes were even more expensive ($1.41 million) than in San Francisco ($1.39 million), prices continued to drop: -0.7% in June from May, -1.8% year-over-year, and -6% from the peak in January 2025.
Boston recently joined the list of cities with price drops from highs in prior years. Mid-tier home prices fell by 0.7% in June from May, by 1.3% year-over-year, and by 1.8% from the high in April 2025.
Only two of our 33 big and expensive cities set a new high in June: Chicago (+0.4% in June, +3.9% year-over-year); and New York City, which had been carving out new highs month after month… well, it didn’t actually set a new high in June, prices dipped for the first time, but close enough (-0.1% in June, +3.8% year-over-year).
Another 3 of the 33 cities had also been carving out new highs month after month, but stopped in March and then backed down over the past three months with the first month-to-month price declines in a while: Philadelphia (-0.2% in June, +0.4% year-over-year); Omaha (-0.02% in June, +1.5% year-over-year); and Minneapolis (-0.4% in June, +0.9% year-over-year).
In the two years between mid-2020 and mid-2022, all of these 33 cities had seen enormous price spikes, including Austin +62%, Phoenix +60%, Fort Worth +50%, Raleigh +49%, and Sacramento +39%.
This massive home-price inflation over those two years, which came on top of the already outsized price increases in the prior years, was caused by the Fed’s reckless free-money policies, which included trillions of dollars of purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which produced the below-3% mortgage rates, even as inflation was raging at the time toward 9%, which led to off-the-chart FOMO buying behavior at the time.
The price index here is the seasonally adjusted three-month-average mid-tier Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) for single-family homes, condos, and co-ops. Mid-tier means the middle-third by price in each market. The ZHVI is a backward-looking measure based on millions of data points in Zillow’s “Database of All Homes,” including transaction data from public records (tax data), MLS, brokerages, local Realtor Associations, real-estate agents, and households across the US. It includes pricing data for off-market deals and for-sale-by-owner deals.
To qualify for the list, the city must be one of the largest by population and be among the expensive cities where the ZHVI for all mid-tier homes must have been at least $300,000 at some point.
Some large cities don’t qualify for this list because the ZHVI for mid-tier homes never reached $300,000, despite the surge in recent years, such as the cities of Houston, Philadelphia, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and many others. In those cities, you can buy at least five homes for the price of one in San Jose. Not every city in America is an expensive housing market!
But Houston and Philadelphia are included anyway because they’re the fourth-largest and sixth-largest cities in the US.
Home prices in 33 big and expensive cities in America.
In the little tables, MoM = month over month; YoY = year-over-year. The column furthest to the right shows the percentage increase “since 2000.” All seasonally adjusted.
| Austin, TX, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -27% | -0.5% | -5.0% | 151% |
Lowest since March 2021.
| Oakland, City, CA, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -25% | 0.2% | -4.6% | 247% |
Back to October 2017.
| New Orleans, LA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2007 |
| -19% | 0.1% | -2.0% | 106% |
Back to February 2020.
| Denver, CO, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -13% | -0.3% | -3.4% | 195% |
| Washington D.C., All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -13% | -0.3% | -2.3% | 253% |
Lowest since October 2019.
| Phoenix, AZ, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jul 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -11% | -0.4% | -2.1% | 246% |
| Portland, OR, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | -0.2% | -0.4% | 214% |
| Fort Worth, TX, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Aug 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | -0.3% | -2.2% | 186% |
| Sacramento, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -9% | -0.2% | -1.9% | 283% |
| Seattle, WA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -9% | -0.6% | -2.2% | 222% |
| Atlanta, GA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -8% | -0.2% | -2.9% | 139% |
| San Francisco, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -8% | 1.2% | 9.5% | 236% |
| Jacksonville, FL, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Nov 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -7% | -0.2% | -1.8% | 203% |
| Dallas, TX, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -7% | -0.4% | -2.7% | 211% |
| Tampa, FL, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | -0.1% | -2.1% | 310% |
| San Jose, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jan 2025 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | -0.7% | -1.8% | 331% |
| Nashville, TN, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | -0.3% | -3.3% | 211% |
| Houston, TX, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jul 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | -0.4% | -2.6% | 151% |
| Orlando, FL, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | -0.2% | -2.4% | 239% |
| Raleigh, NC, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | -0.3% | -2.1% | 147% |
| Honolulu, HI, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | -0.2% | 0.9% | 206% |
| Los Angeles, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Dec 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -4% | -0.3% | -0.7% | 322% |
| San Diego, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -4% | -0.2% | -1.7% | 346% |
| Las Vegas, NV, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From June 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -4% | -0.5% | -3.1% | 174% |
| Miami, FL City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Oct 2024 | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -3% | 0.0% | -0.7% | 342% |
| Salt Lake City, UT, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -3% | 0.0% | 1.7% | 239% |
| Charlotte, NC, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -2% | -0.3% | -1.1% | 166% |
| Boston, MA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Apr 2025 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -2% | -0.7% | -1.3% | 261% |
| Philadelphia, PA, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -0.2% | 0.4% | 270% |
| Minneapolis, MN, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -0.4% | 0.9% | 194% |
| Omaha, NE, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| 0.0% | 1.5% | 151% |
| New York City, NY, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -0.1% | 3.8% | 240% |
| Chicago, IL, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| 0.4% | 3.9% | 118.1% |
In case you missed it: Supply of Existing Single-Family Homes Jumps to 10-Year High, Condo Supply to 14-Year High. Sales Slip Deeper into Deep Freeze.
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