Oakland, Austin, Cape Coral, New Orleans, San Francisco, Birmingham, Fort Myers, Washington DC, Sarasota, Denver, Hayward, Portland, Phoenix, Naples, St. Petersburg.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Prices of mid-tier single-family homes in 15 bigger cities have dropped by 10% to 24% through September from their respective peaks in 2022 or 2024, seasonally adjusted – one more than a month ago, the new addition being St. Petersburg, FL. None of them had set a new high in 2023; it was set either in 2022 or in 2024 (year of peak):
- Oakland, CA: -24% (2022)
- Austin, TX: -24% (2022)
- Cape Coral, FL: -20% (2022)
- New Orleans, LA: -19% (2022)
- San Francisco, CA: -16% (2022)
- Birmingham, AL: -15% (2022)
- Fort Myers, FL: -13% (2022)
- Washington, DC: -13% (2022)
- Sarasota, FL: -12% (2022)
- Denver, CO: -11% (2022)
- Hayward, CA: -11% (2022)
- Portland, OR: -10% (2022)
- Phoenix, AZ: -10% (2024)
- Naples, FL: -10% (2024)
- St. Petersburg, FL: -10% (2024)
Didn’t make the list: There are many other bigger cities where mid-tier single-family home prices have declined from their respective peaks in 2022 or 2024, but not enough to make the 10% cutoff. None of them had set a new high in 2023.
Four of them have dropped by about 9%; each monthly decline gets them closer to the double-digit zone. Others are still quite a bit away from the 10% line.
Here are some salient examples (year of peak):
- Fort Worth, TX: -9% (2022)
- Mesa, AZ: -9% (2022)
- Glendale, AZ: -9% (2022)
- Aurora, CO: -9% (2024)
- Gilbert, AZ: -8% (2022)
- Seattle, WA: -8% (2022)
- San Antonio, TX: -8% (2024)
- Sacramento, CA: -8% (2022)
- Boise, ID: -7% (2022)
- Memphis, TN: -7% (2022)
- Colorado Springs, CO: -7% (2022)
- Arlington, TX: -7% (2022)
- Tampa, Fl: -6% (2024)
- Dallas, TX: -6% (2024)
- Plano, TX: -6% (2024)
- San Jose, CA: -5% (2024)
- Atlanta, GA: -5% (2022)
- Jacksonville, FL: -5% (2024)
- Spokane, WA: -5% (2024)
- Orlando, FL: -4% (2024)
- Los Angeles, CA: -4% (2024)
- San Diego, CA: -4% (2024)
- Corpus Christi, TX: 14% (2024)
- Miami, FL: -3% (2024)
- Reno, NV: -3% (2024)
In some other bigger cities, prices of single-family homes have continued to rise or have flattened out. My discussion and charts of the price gains and declines in 33 large and expensive metropolitan areas from Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos (-23% from peak) to Chicago-Naperville-Elgin (new high, +3.5% year-over-year), is here.
The entire pandemic price spike got wiped out in 4 of 15 cities. But in these four cities, the mid-2020 to mid-2022 price explosion was less pronounced than in other cities.
- San Francisco
- Oakland
- Washington, DC
- New Orleans.
Year-over-year, prices declined in all 15 cities in September, led by:
- Fort Myers: -10.6%
- Oakland: -10.2%
- Cape Coral: -10.2%
- Sarasota: -9.3%
- St. Petersburg: -9.1%
- Naples: -8.0%
- Hayward: -7.5%
- Austin: -6.8%
Methodology and data: These prices are seasonally adjusted three-month averages of single-family mid-tier homes in “cities” (not in Metropolitan Statistical Areas, which are much larger). All data here are from the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), which is based on millions of data points in Zillow’s “Database of All Homes,” including 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. These are not median prices.
The 15 bigger cities with the biggest price declines:
The metrics in each table from left to right: price decline from the peak, month-over-month change (MoM), year-over-year change (YoY), and the remaining increase since January 2000 (for Birmingham, since 2002, which is as far as the data goes back).
| Oakland, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -24% | -0.8% | -10.2% | 277% |
Another big month-to-month drop in prices of mid-tier single-family homes after -1.3% in August, -1.5% in July, -1.6% in June, and -1.4% in May!
Back to April 2018. The drop since May 2022 has more than wiped out the entire 24% price explosion from May 2020 to May 2022.
In the 10 years from mid-2012 to the peak in May 2022, prices exploded by 236%, which was obviously unsustainable.
| Austin, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -24% | -0.2% | -6.8% | 166% |
Lowest since April 2021. Prices have given up more than half of the 63% price explosion from mid-2020 to mid-2022.
These kinds of housing charts are absurd, a work of FOMO mania and the Fed’s free money that ended in 2022.
| Cape Coral, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Aug 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -20% | -0.8% | -10.2% | 214% |
Lowest since October 2021. Between mid-2020 to mid-2022, prices had exploded by 76%.
| New Orleans, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2007 |
| -19% | -0.3% | -2.7% | 108% |
Back to April 2020. Prices have given up the entire 23% price spike between mid-2020 and mid-2022.
| San Francisco, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -16% | 0.4% | -0.7% | 234% |
Back to May 2018.
| Birmingham, AL, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Jul 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2002 |
| -15% | 0.3% | -2.9% | 32% |
Back to June 2021. From mid-2020 to mid-2022, prices exploded by 53%, and have now given up about one-third of that.
| Fort Myers, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Aug 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -14% | -0.9% | -10.6% | 189% |
Lowest since January 2022. Prices had exploded by 62% from mid-2020 to mid-2022.
| Washington D.C., Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -13% | -0.2% | -4.5% | 272% |
Lowest since April 2020, having undone the entire price spike from mid-2020 to mid-2022.
| Sarasota, FL, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Aug 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -12% | -0.9% | -9.3% | 227% |
Lowest since February 2022.
| Denver, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Jun 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -11% | -0.1% | -4.5% | 212% |
Lowest since November 2021.
| Hayward, CA, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Aug 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -11% | -0.8% | -8% | 274% |
Back to July 2021. Prices in this East Bay city spiked by 35% from mid-2020 to mid-2022, and soared by nearly 300% in the 10 years from 2012 to 2022.
| Phoenix, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Jul 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | -0.3% | -4.5% | 248% |
Lowest since December 2021, only making a dent in the 60% price explosion from mid-2020 to mid-2022.
| Naples, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From Apr 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | -0.9% | -8.0% | 246.6% |
Lowest since March 2022. Between mid-2020 and mid-2022 prices exploded by 76%. between mid-2020 to mid-2024, prices exploded by 82%.
| Portland, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From May 2022 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | 0.0% | -1.2% | 222% |
Back to June 2021.
| St. Petersburg, City, Single-Family Home Prices | |||
| From May 2024 peak | MoM | YoY | Since 2000 |
| -10% | -0.9% | -9.1% | 354% |
Lowest since March 2022.
And in case you missed it: The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America: Price Drops & Gains in 33 Large Expensive Metros in September 2025
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Interesting, thanks. You don’t have a chart for Coloma or Watervliet, Michigan, do you?
I could build one but I’m not going to.
Just curious, what software do you use to make these?
Excel.
Thanks. I need to take a class on how to do charts, pivot tables, and all of that in Excel. It’s amazing what you can do with it if you know what you’re doing (which I don’t.)
It feels like a lot of them are platuing their progress down. I wonder if the even slower winter season helps or hurts the prices.
Depends on how badly the seller needs to sell. Only motivated sellers are still in the market and chasing the prices down; everyone else has pulled their listings or suffers from “I know what I’ve got, make me move” delusion.
This spring should be a positively epic show of sellers who have largely gotten the memo that prices are falling and the time for getting out is at hand if you have a mind to sell in the next five years or so. Some select locations have prices that are holding steady or going up, but those were not the Covid bubble hot spots.
I keep a spreadsheet of properties that we are tracking and I’m going to build an AI tool to make it easier to analyze my “portfolio” and look at trends. Yes, I know Zillow and Realtor will do that for me by Zip Code, but I only want to look at properties over a certain acreage and within a narrow price band and track their performance/listing history. By this time next year, there will be a dozen of these types of AI based tools for buyers.
Doesn’t the fact that Oakland is the biggest loser of all support the theory that the “housing shortage” narrative was all BS and this is just a classic bubble with a symmetrical decline?
What I always find the most interesting about the plots in this article and your other articles is the general trend is downward nationwide at a pretty good pace, except one or two outliers.
In this article, the two outlier cities that baffle me the most are the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin area and Portland. Usually, steady or increasing prices would indicate lots of new people (hence jobs). Neither the Chicago area (Illinois-high taxes) nor Portland (no heavy manufacturing or high tech industries) would seem to meet this criteria.. Granted, my knowledge of Portland is mainly from the show “Portlandia” and TV scenes of Antifa fighting the police. LOL
Anyone from these areas have any thoughts?
The City of Portland and the metro of Portland have declining prices, though the decline is slow.
The City of Chicago and the huge Chicago metro (million pop) has been hitting new highs in prices.
Thanks for including Naples. The 2021/22 increase there was extraordinary.
It’s also interesting to me that Naples is only down 10% from peak, while Cape Coral, less than a hour’s drive away, is down 20%. It goes to show how local everything is.
My theory is that Naples has gone down less because it’s a richer city, and is being propped up by people who just are price indifferent.
People also forget that if prices go up by 100% (double) and then drop by 20%, then you’re only up 60% from where you started. So in a few more months, Cape Coral may have given up half of its 2020-2022 increases.
Zoning: Some, most of this price drop resistance is going to be due to government. Government benefits greatly from increases in property tax revenue and they control the throttle of the market, not so much with building permits, but areas that are even open for subdivisions; i.e., the “dividing” in “subdividing.”
For the Sacramento market there is plenty of water available that is doing nothing but pushing the bay (essentially ocean) back and forth a couple of sloshing miles at the end of a very long Sacramento river delta. For decades (half a century +) there has been talk of a southern freeway south of the city from Elk Grove to El Dorado Hills that would provide a housing, mixed use area like I880 did on the North side of Sacramento. Right now the main road out there where a Freeway will go is a 2 (two) lane road!; not even 4 lanes for safety for decades; it has traffic jams just from the flow of cars at commuting hours, in a “greater Sacramento area” of 2.6 million people. Sacramento is the Capital of the most populated state in the nation (richest country on earth), if California was a country it would be the 4th richest in the World.