The housing market is in a serious crunchy from the COVID-19 pandemic, with Limited inventoryHigh prices of houses and mortgages in the 7%range, continuing to keep many buyers of potential houses locked. But even in the midst of such tight constraints, modest decreases in the prices of houses can still be found in certain regions of the country.
It is according to a new report by Realtor.com, which measures changes in the median prices of houses in the 50 largest American metropolitan zones since 2022, when the median prices of houses have reached a culminate $ 443,000 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis.
The extent to which the prices of houses decrease varies from one region to another according to the Realtor.com report, which is based on the housing data of the brokerage platform.
“The housing market has moderately cooled in 2025,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, in a report on the report. “But the extent and persistence of rebalancing really vary across the country. And regionally, buyers and sellers are likely to experience a very different market. ”
Behind these significant price differences are the inventory. Currently, the housing market is mainly divided into two camps, with a higher inventory in the south and west, where deeper price reductions can be found, and a more limited inventory in the Midwest and the North-East, said Jake Krimmel, main economist at Realtor.com.
“It’s a story of supply and demand,” Krimmel told CBS Moneywatch. “When you have fewer houses for sale, and if there is still a sufficient request, it may exert upward pressure on prices or prevent them from lowering.”
Cities where prices decrease
The most important decreases in median registration prices in 2025 tend to be concentrated in the south and west, where the 19 of the 50 largest American metropolitan areas with median housing prices below July 2022 are located.
“After years of intense competition, it begins to feel more balanced – especially in the South and West,” said Gary Ashton, founder of Ashton Real Estate Group of Re / Max ad even in a press release on the Realtor.com report. “It is not yet a buyer market, but we are heading in this direction.”
The cities that have experienced the largest price reductions were Austin, where the median registration prices have dropped almost 15% in the past three years; And Miami, where prices dropped by around 19%.
According to Krimmel, the inventory increases on these markets due to the fact that houses remain longer on the market, more house sellers reduce prices and that new announcements are climbing.
A boom in construction also increased housing supply in these regions during the COVVI-19 pandemic, when market demand like Austin, Denver and Florida exploded, he added.
Austin, Los Angeles and Miami have experienced the largest drop in the median price of registration in the past year, although prices in Los Angeles remain more than 18% above the median registration price in 2022.
Cities where prices are increasing
The housing markets of the northeast and midwest cities remain in a hurry due to the prices “tights” and tight stocks, said Krimmel. Other contributory factors include stricter laws on zoning and land regulation that makes the construction of new houses more difficult, he said.
In New York, for example, median registration prices have increased by around 16% since 2022, according to the report. Meanwhile, median registration prices in Milwaukee increased by 26%.
In addition, the number of inscriptions active per month in the northeast is still 50% lower than pre-countryic levels, according to Krimmel. The number of announcements active in the Midwest is down 40%, indicating an inventory shortage in both regions, he said.
While the prices of median registration have dropped in the past year in northeast cities such as Boston and Philadelphia, which have experienced decreases of 1.4% and 1.2%, respectively, median prices remain at least 10% above those of 2022.
“Insofar as there is a drop in prices in the northeast and the midwest, for the most part, these are quite modest numbers,” said Krimmel.