In 33 charts. A special word about San Francisco where AI mania trickled down from a “mansion shortage” to mid-tier homes.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The 33 price charts are below. Here’s the summary. Prices of mid-tier homes (single-family, condos, and co-ops) in June were down from their respective peaks in prior years in 28 of the 33 big and expensive cities we track here, led by Austin (-27%), Oakland (-25%), and New Orleans (-19%).
In most of those cities, the highs were either in 2022 (17 cities) or in 2024 (9 cities). In two cities, the highs occurred in early 2025: Boston (April 2025) and San Jose (January 2025).
Year-over-year, prices declined in 24 of the 33 big and expensive cities, led by Austin (-4.4%), Las Vegas (-3.1%), and Nashville (-3.0%).
And in 2 of the 33 cities, home prices rose to new highs: Chicago and New York City.
A special word about San Francisco, the epicenter of AI: It’s where AI mania has bled into the housing market. It started in the luxury market, leading to a “mansion shortage,” as it’s called. In recent months, the AI mania effects trickled down into the mid-tier market that we track here, and mid-tier prices have begun to spike. In July, mid-tier prices spiked by 1.5% from June, bringing the year-over-year spike to 11.6%.
Not long ago, San Francisco was near the top of the list of home-price declines. In the second half last year, mid-tier home prices flipped from declining to surging. Despite the spike since then, mid-tier home prices in July were still 6% below the all-time high of 2022. Given the magnitude of the recent spikes, and if AI mania lasts long enough, mid-tier prices could set a new high before yearend for the first time since 2022. The chart below is quite something.
Earlier this year, Boston joined the line-up of cities with price declines from highs in prior years. Mid-tier home prices fell by 0.5% in July from June, by 1.4% year-over-year, and by 2.3% from the high in April 2025.
| Cities with Price Declines from Peak in Prior Years | From peak | Year of peak | YoY | ||
| 1 | Austin | TX | -27% | 2022 | -4.4% |
| 2 | Oakland | CA | -25% | 2022 | -2.7% |
| 3 | New Orleans | LA | -19% | 2022 | -1.9% |
| 4 | Washington | DC | -13% | 2022 | -1.7% |
| 5 | Denver | CO | -13% | 2022 | -2.7% |
| 6 | Phoenix | AZ | -11% | 2022 | -1.8% |
| 7 | Fort Worth | TX | -10% | 2022 | -2.0% |
| 8 | Portland | OR | -10% | 2022 | -0.1% |
| 9 | Seattle | WA | -10% | 2022 | -1.8% |
| 10 | Sacramento | CA | -9% | 2022 | -1.4% |
| 11 | Atlanta | GA | -8% | 2022 | -2.4% |
| 12 | Dallas | TX | -8% | 2024 | -2.1% |
| 13 | Jacksonville | FL | -7% | 2024 | -1.3% |
| 14 | Tampa | FL | -6% | 2024 | -1.3% |
| 15 | San Francisco | CA | -6% | 2022 | 11.6% |
| 16 | San Jose | CA | -6% | 2025 | -1.1% |
| 17 | Nashville | TN | -6% | 2022 | -3.0% |
| 18 | Houston | TX | -6% | 2024 | -2.5% |
| 19 | Orlando | FL | -5% | 2024 | -1.9% |
| 20 | Honolulu | HI | -5% | 2022 | 1.4% |
| 21 | Las Vegas | NV | -5% | 2022 | -3.1% |
| 22 | Raleigh | NC | -5% | 2022 | -2.0% |
| 23 | San Diego | CA | -4% | 2024 | -1.0% |
| 24 | Los Angeles | CA | -4% | 2024 | -0.5% |
| 25 | Salt Lake City | UT | -3% | 2022 | 2.1% |
| 26 | Charlotte | NC | -3% | 2024 | -1.0% |
| 27 | Miami | FL | -3% | 2024 | 0.0% |
| 28 | Boston | MA | -2% | 2025 | -1.4% |
But prices had exploded in these cities in the two years between mid-2020 and mid-2022, including in Austin (+62%), Phoenix (+60%), Fort Worth (+50%), Raleigh (+49%), and Sacramento (+39%). This home price explosion came on top of already high prices.
The home price explosion was caused by the Fed’s reckless monetary policies, which included trillions of dollars of purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities (MBS), with newly created money, which produced the below-3% mortgage rates, even as inflation was surging at the time toward 9%. Americans responded with off-the-chart FOMO buying behavior at the time. The FOMO was about mortgage rates, and people trampled all over each other and bid up prices in order to buy a home to lock in these mortgages.
In cities where prices have dropped from those peaks, these buyers now have below 3% mortgages on homes who prices have dropped, and they’re fine as long as they stay put.
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 (single-family, condos, and co-ops) 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 less expensive cities, five mid-tier homes combined sell for less than one mid-tier home in San Francisco. Not every city in America is an expensive housing market! Some cities have quite reasonable prices.
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% | -0.1% | -4.4% | 150% |
Lowest since March 2021.
| Oakland, City, CA, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -25% | 0.4% | -2.7% | 248% |
Prices are where they’d first been in October 2017.
| New Orleans, LA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2007 |
| -19% | 0.0% | -1.9% | 106% |
| Washington D.C., All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -13% | 0.1% | -1.7% | 254% |
Where prices had first been in December 2019.
| Denver, CO, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -13% | 0.1% | -2.7% | 196% |
| Phoenix, AZ, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jul 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -11% | -0.2% | -1.8% | 245% |
| Fort Worth, TX, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Aug 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | -0.2% | -2.0% | 186% |
| Portland, OR, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | 0.1% | -0.1% | 214% |
| Seattle, WA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | -0.3% | -1.8% | 221% |
| Sacramento, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -9% | -0.1% | -1.4% | 283% |
| Atlanta, GA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -8% | -0.1% | -2.4% | 139% |
| Dallas, TX, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -8% | -0.1% | -2.1% | 211% |
| Jacksonville, FL, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Nov 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -7% | -0.1% | -1.3% | 203% |
| Tampa, FL, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | 0.1% | -1.3% | 310% |
| San Francisco, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | 1.5% | 11.6% | 241% |
| San Jose, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jan 2025 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | -0.2% | -1.1% | 330% |
| Nashville, TN, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | -0.2% | -3.0% | 210% |
| Houston, TX, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jul 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -6% | -0.3% | -2.5% | 151% |
| Orlando, FL, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | -0.1% | -1.9% | 238% |
| Honolulu, HI, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | 0.1% | 1.4% | 206% |
| Las Vegas, NV, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From June 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | -0.4% | -3.1% | 173% |
| Raleigh, NC, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -5% | -0.2% | -2.0% | 147% |
| San Diego, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -4% | 0.0% | -1.0% | 346% |
| Los Angeles, CA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Dec 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -4% | -0.1% | -0.5% | 321% |
| Salt Lake City, UT, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From July 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -3% | 0.3% | 2.1% | 240% |
| Charlotte, NC, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From May 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -3% | -0.2% | -1.0% | 165% |
| Miami, FL City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Oct 2024 | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -3% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 343% |
| Boston, MA, City, All Homes, Prices | |||
| From Apr 2025 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -2% | -0.5% | -1.4% | 260% |
| Philadelphia, PA, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| 0.0% | 0.2% | 270% |
| Minneapolis, MN, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -0.1% | 0.7% | 194% |
| Omaha, NE, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| 0.2% | 1.7% | 151% |
| New York City, NY, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| 0.2% | 3.9% | 240% |
| Chicago, IL, City, All Homes, Prices | ||
| MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| 0.6% | 4.5% | 119.5% |
In case you missed it: Sales of Existing Single-Family Homes Sink Deeper into Mud, Supply Jumps to 10-Year High, Condo Supply at 14-Year High
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