UNITED STATES, Sept. 12 (DC Times Online) — Realtor.com’s August housing analysis found that median listing prices per square foot fell in 36 of the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, led by Austin, Tampa and Memphis.
Nationwide, the median listing price per square foot dropped 1.8% from a year earlier. It was the 10th consecutive month of annual declines, according to Realtor.com Research.
The data measures asking prices for homes listed for sale. It does not measure the prices buyers ultimately paid in completed transactions.
Where prices fell the most
The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, metropolitan area recorded the largest decline. Its median listing price per square foot fell 8.1% year over year in August, Realtor.com reported.
The 10 metros with the largest declines were:
- Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas: down 8.1%
- Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida: down 5.6%
- Memphis, Tennessee-Mississippi-Arkansas: down 4.1%
- San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, California: down 3.9%
- San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas: down 3.6%
- Denver-Aurora-Centennial, Colorado: down 3.4%
- Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Maryland: down 3.2%
- San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, California: down 2.7%
- Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida: down 2.6%
- Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon-Washington: down 2.4%
The median listing prices in these 10 metropolitan areas ranged from $299,995 in Memphis to $908,700 in San Francisco, according to Realtor.com’s metro analysis. Those figures are overall median listing prices, while the rankings are based on price per square foot.
What the measure shows
Price per square foot divides a home’s listing price by its interior size. A median is the midpoint of the listings measured, meaning half were priced above it and half below it.
Because the Realtor.com figures are based on listings, they can reflect changes in the homes coming onto the market as well as changes in asking prices. The supplied analysis does not include listing counts, sales volume, days on market or the difference between asking prices and final sale prices.
Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel said many of the markets with the largest declines were boomtowns during 2020-22 and are still giving back some of those pandemic-era gains. The analysis does not independently establish how much of the decline came from mortgage rates, inventory, demand or other market conditions.
Not every major market declined
The largest increases in median listing price per square foot were reported in Providence, Rhode Island, where the measure rose 9.3%; Indianapolis, up 4.4%; and Chicago, up 3.6%.
At the regional level, Realtor.com reported that median national list prices fell 3.6% year over year in the Northeast, 2.6% in the South and 2.1% in the West. Prices were flat in the Midwest.
The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area illustrates why a falling price measure does not necessarily mean a market is broadly inexpensive. Its median listing price per square foot fell 3.9%, ranking fourth among the 50 largest metros, but its reported median listing price was still the highest among the 10 biggest decliners at $908,700.
The August report provides a broad view of asking-price trends across major U.S. markets. It does not show whether individual neighborhoods, property types or completed home sales followed the same pattern.
