The housing market has been in a serious crunch since the COVID-19 pandemic, with limited inventory, elevated home prices and mortgages in the 7% range, continuing to keep many would-be home buyers locked out. But even amid such tight constraints, modest declines in home prices can still be found in some regions of the country.
That’s according to a new report from Realtor.com, which measures changes in median home prices across the 50 largest U.S. metro areas since 2022, when median home prices hit a peak of $443,000 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis.
The extent to which home prices are declining varies from region to region according to the Realtor.com report, which is based on the brokerage platform’s housing data.
“The housing market has cooled modestly in 2025,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, in a statement on the report. “But the extent and persistence of rebalancing really varies across the country. And regionally, homebuyers and sellers are likely to experience a very different market.”
Behind those notable price differences is inventory. Right now, the housing market is essentially divided into two camps, with higher inventory in the South and West, where deeper price cuts can be found, and more limited inventory in the Midwest and Northeast, said Jake Krimmel, a senior economist at Realtor.com.
“It’s a supply and demand story,” Krimmel told CBS MoneyWatch. “When you have fewer homes for sale, and if there is still sufficient demand, that’s going to maybe put upward pressure on prices or prevent them from falling.”
Cities where prices are falling
The largest declines in median listing prices in 2025 tend to be concentrated in the South and West, where all 19 of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas with median housing prices below July 2022 levels are located.
“After years of intense competition, it’s starting to feel more balanced — especially in the South and West,” Gary Ashton, founder of The Ashton Real Estate Group of RE/MAX Advantage said in a statement on the Realtor.com report. “It’s not a buyer’s market yet, but we’re headed in that direction.”
The cities that saw the biggest declines in price were Austin, where median listing prices have fallen nearly 15% over the last three years; and Miami, where prices have dropped around 19%.
According to Krimmel, inventory is rising in these markets due to the fact that homes are staying on the market longer, more home sellers are reducing prices and new listings are climbing.
A boom in building also boosted housing supply in those regions during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for markets like Austin, Denver and Florida exploded, he added.
Austin, Los Angeles and Miami saw the largest declines in median listing price over the past year, although prices in Los Angeles remain more than 18% above the median listing price in 2022.
Cities where prices are rising
Housing markets in cities in Northeast and Midwest remain squeezed due to “sticky high” prices and tight inventory, said Krimmel. Other contributing factors include stricter zoning and land use regulation laws that make building new houses more difficult, he said.
In New York, for example, median listing prices have climbed roughly 16% since 2022, according to the report. Meanwhile, median listing prices in Milwaukee increased 26%.
Furthermore, the number of active listings per month in the Northeast is still 50% below pre-pandemic levels, according to Krimmel. The number of active listings in the Midwest is down 40%, pointing to an inventory shortage in both regions, he said.
While median listing prices have gone down over the last year in northeastern cities like Boston and Philadelphia, which saw 1.4% and 1.2% decreases, respectively, median prices remain at least 10% above those from 2022.
“To the extent that there are falling prices in the Northeast and the Midwest, for the most part it’s pretty modest numbers,” said Krimmel.
