Home prices dropping fastest in major US cities and theyre not the ones you think
While the US housing market cools down and enters a seasonal late-summer transition, price drops are hitting some metropolitan areas much harder than others—and it might not be where you think.High mortgage rates and shifting local supply-and-demand dynamics have driven down list prices across the country, though more slowly in August than in previous months.Sellers are trending toward more realistic pricing, and the market is seeing broader price corrections.Metro areas that saw explosive, COVID-19 pandemic-era growth are now experiencing some of the deepest cuts in the price per square foot.In August, the price per square foot—a measure that controls for the size of homes on the market—decreased year over year for the 10th straight month.
Nationwide, housing prices per square foot are down 1.8% year over year, and median list prices fell year over year in three of the four regions (-3.6% in the Northeast, -2.6% in the South, and -2.1% in the West), while prices remained flat in the Midwest.At the metro level, the median list price per square foot fell in 36 of the top 50 metros in August, another sign that it’s “game over” for unrealistic seller demands.The largest price-per-square-foot declines were in Austin, TX (-8.1%); Tampa, FL (-5.6%); and Memphis, TN (-4.1%).The largest gains were in Providence, RI (+9.3%); Indianapolis (+4.4%); and Chicago (+3.6%).Among the 50 biggest metro areas, these saw the biggest annual declines in listing price per square foot in August:Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel says some of this market shift in these cities may be due to continual readjustment following the COVID-19 pandemic.“One common thread for most markets—including Austin, Tampa, San Antonio, Denver—is 2020–22 boomtowns continuing to give back some of their pandemic-era gains.
These are also, by and large, places with much more inventory now than pre-pandemic norms,” he says.One outlier is San Francisco, where the market saw a...