UNITED STATES, Sept. 12 (DC Times Online) — Realtor.com’s August housing analysis found that median listing prices per square foot fell from a year earlier in 36 of the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, with the sharpest declines concentrated in parts of Texas, Florida and the West.
Nationwide, the measure fell 1.8% year over year. It was the 10th consecutive month of annual declines, according to Realtor.com Research.
The data tracks asking prices for homes listed for sale. It does not measure the prices buyers ultimately paid in completed transactions.
Which metros saw the largest declines?
The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, metro had the largest drop in median listing price per square foot, down 8.1% from August 2025. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida, followed with a 5.6% decline. Memphis, Tennessee-Mississippi-Arkansas, was down 4.1%.
The rest of the 10 largest declines were:
- 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%
These are metropolitan areas, not necessarily individual cities. Several of the reported markets also cross state lines.
What do the numbers say about prices?
The median listing prices among the 10 metros with the largest per-square-foot declines ranged from $299,995 in Memphis to $908,700 in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro, Realtor.com reported.
The per-square-foot measure helps account for differences in home size. A home’s total asking price can stay the same while its price per square foot changes if the mix of homes listed in a market changes. Because the figures are based on listings, they can also differ from closed-sale data.
Realtor.com reported that median list prices fell year over year across the Northeast, South and West. The regional declines were 3.6% in the Northeast, 2.6% in the South and 2.1% in the West. The Midwest was flat on the measure cited in the report.
Did every major market decline?
No. Providence, Rhode Island, recorded the largest increase in median listing price per square foot, up 9.3% year over year. Indianapolis rose 4.4%, and Chicago increased 3.6%.
The differences show that the national housing market is not moving in one direction. Prices per square foot were falling in most of the largest metros, but some markets continued to post annual gains.
What does the report not show?
Realtor.com’s figures do not show how much inventory was available in each metro, how long homes stayed on the market, how many listings received price cuts or how many homes sold. They also do not establish whether sellers accepted lower prices in completed transactions.
Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel said the largest declines included several markets that had been among the country’s pandemic-era boomtowns. Realtor.com described the broader pattern as a shift away from sellers’ ability to demand unusually high prices, but the supplied analysis does not provide transaction-level evidence to measure that change.
The August figures were published by Realtor.com Research on Sept. 2, 2026, followed by the metro-level analysis on Sept. 5.
