National home prices barely moved in April, up less than 1% year-over-year, even as dozens of local markets registered deep declines. Dr. Selma Hepp, an expert in housing markets, described the split plainly: "Rising prices and interest rates have gutted affordability in these markets and return-to-office mandates have sent many workers back to their original headquarters," she said.
The scale of the local damage is clear. Mid-tier condo prices in 31 bigger cities have fallen between 12% and 31% from prior highs; Oakland condos led those losses with a 31% drop, followed by St. Petersburg, Florida at 28% and Austin at 26%. Single-family homes in 15 bigger cities are down between 10% and 26% from their peaks through April, seasonally adjusted. In McKinney, Texas, prices have tumbled 13% from the peak reached after a run-up that exploded 63% from mid-2020 to mid-2022; existing single-family home prices in McKinney fell 0.7% from March and 7.1% year-over-year in April. Fort Worth is down 10% from its peak and the city of Dallas is down 6.1%, missing the 10% cutoff used for that list.
The timing of the peaks matters. In 12 of the 15 cities with double-digit single-family declines, the highs were posted in mid-2022; three—Phoenix, St. Petersburg and Naples/Collier County—peaked in 2024. Outside those lists, other extreme moves show the unevenness of the market: Greenville, Mississippi saw home prices fall 24.5% over the last 12 months, while Denver prices slid 3.13% year-over-year. San Francisco's single-family segment, after a recent jump tied to an AI-driven rebound and a so-called "mansion shortage," remains about 9% below its 2022 peak.
What is shifting buyer leverage is inventory. "Active listings in many of these markets are up 20% or more from a year ago, putting buyers back into the driver seat," said Ryan Fitzgerald of Raleigh Realty. Builders and sellers have responded to demand swings: homebuilders flooded McKinney with new supply, and at the national level the average selling price reported by a major builder was down 24% from the 2022 peak.
Local policy and insurance costs are amplifying pressure on specific condo markets. "A combination of soaring homeowners' insurance, increased HOA fees after new condo safety regulations, low in-migration and oversupply of inventory have crashed prices in cities like Cape Coral and North Port," said Thomas O'Shaughnessy, pointing to forces that have driven seven of the top 10 metro declines into Florida cities.
The contrast—flat national indices and sharp local swings—is the story. National indices roughly agree that the aggregate changed little year-over-year, but that headline masks substantial divergence: condo markets in 31 big cities have shed double-digit shares while many suburban single-family markets that surged during the pandemic have retraced between 10% and 26% from their peaks. Looking just at the top 100 metro areas, the ten worst-performing metros show how concentrated the downturn is.
Tension between the broad and the local picture complicates forecasts. Markets that ran the hardest in 2020–22 have given back meaningful ground, but some places—San Francisco among them—have shown rebounds tied to specific industry demand. At the same time, fresh supply, higher listings and regulatory-driven cost increases for condo owners are accelerating price declines in coastal and Sun Belt pockets even as other metros stabilize.
The clearest near-term takeaway is that the housing cycle is now driven by local supply, insurance and employment shifts rather than a single national trend. For buyers that means pockets of opportunity where listings have jumped and prices have corrected; for owners in oversupplied condo markets or places hit by higher holding costs, the pain will likely continue. Hepp's warning captures the new reality: affordability and workplace decisions—not aggregate indices—will determine where home prices head next.
