United States Housing Market Analysis: 16 Quarters of Data

United States home prices rose 15.6% over the last 16 quarters, from Q3 2022 through Q2 2026, according to the FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index. The pace has cooled hard: annual price growth stood at 3.0% in Q2 2026, down from 15.8% when this window opened. Meanwhile the national median listing price sat at $428,167 in Q2 2026, and the active listing count reached 1,054,748 homes, 47.2% more than four years earlier (both series are Realtor.com inventory data retrieved through FRED). Prices still climbing, growth slowing, asking prices slipping, inventory piling up: that is the national housing story right now, and the numbers below walk through it quarter by quarter.

How United States Home Prices Have Moved

The FHFA index read 622.9 in Q3 2022. It slipped to 616.2 in Q4 2022, the only quarter-over-quarter decline in the entire window, then resumed climbing and never stopped: 637.9 by Q2 2023, 673.2 by Q2 2024, 698.7 by Q2 2025, and 719.9 in Q2 2026.

The growth rate tells the more interesting story. Annual appreciation ran 15.8% in Q3 2022, the tail end of the pandemic run-up. Then it fell off a cliff: 10.8% in Q4 2022, 7.5% in Q1 2023, and 4.0% by Q2 2023. From there the market settled into a slower grind, with year-over-year growth bouncing between 4.1% and 6.1% from Q3 2023 through Q4 2024. Since then the easing has been steady: 4.7% in Q1 2025, 3.8% in Q2 2025, and 3.0% in Q2 2026, the softest reading of the whole period.

Worth underlining: annual growth never went negative in any of the 16 quarters. The market that added double-digit value in 2022 now appreciates at 3.0% a year, but it still appreciates.

What Homes Are Listed For

The national median listing price peaked at $438,669 in Q2 2023 and has not gotten back there since. Three years later, in Q2 2026, the median asking price was $428,167.

List prices follow a seasonal sawtooth, rising every spring and easing every winter, so the annual comparisons tell the cleaner story. Asking prices went essentially flat through 2023 (up 0.8% in Q2, up 0.1% in Q3, up 0.7% in Q4), then turned negative for four straight quarters from Q2 2024 through Q1 2025. After a faint flicker of growth in mid-2025 (0.2% in both Q2 and Q3), they rolled over again: down 0.2% in Q4 2025, down 1.5% in Q1 2026, and down 2.1% in Q2 2026, the steepest annual decline of the window.

Notice the tension here. The FHFA index, which tracks actual transaction prices, kept rising through the same stretch that asking prices drifted lower. Asking prices reflect what sellers hope to get and what mix of homes hits the market in a given quarter, and right now they are telling a more cautious story than closed sales are.

How Many Homes Are on the Market

Inventory is the biggest change in this entire dataset. The Realtor.com active listing count averaged 716,656 homes in Q3 2022. It bottomed at 586,197 in Q1 2023, then began a long, relentless climb: 787,337 by Q2 2024, 910,039 in Q3 2024, and past the one million mark at 1,025,957 in Q2 2025. The quarterly peak came in Q3 2025 at 1,100,625. As of Q2 2026 the count stands at 1,054,748, a 47.2% increase across the 16 quarters, and the most recent monthly reading (July 2026) came in higher still at 1,126,252.

The growth numbers show how one-directional this has been. Listings grew year over year in 15 of the 16 quarters, peaking at 63.2% annual growth in Q1 2023 and running above 30% in mid-2024 and again in Q2 2025. Only Q3 2023 (down 6.1%) broke the pattern. The rate of increase has cooled to 2.8% as of Q2 2026, but slower growth on a bigger base still means more competition every quarter.

For a seller, inventory is leverage, plain and simple. When roughly 716,656 homes were listed nationally, a well-priced house had few rivals and buyers moved fast. With more than a million on the market, buyers compare, negotiate, and walk away from anything that needs work or sits even slightly above the comps. More listings generally mean more days on market, more price cuts, and more inspection-stage renegotiation. None of that is prediction; it is what today's supply picture already means.

The Mortgage Rate Backdrop

None of this happened in a vacuum. The Freddie Mac 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average ran 5.62% in Q3 2022, crossed 7% in Q3 2023 at 7.04%, and peaked at 7.30% in Q4 2023. Rates have loosened since, but they never got cheap: the 6.11% average in Q1 2026 was the lowest quarterly reading since the window opened, and Q2 2026 ticked back up to 6.41%.

Every single quarter since Q4 2022 has averaged above 6%. That backdrop sits behind both trends above: buyers stretching against high payments have pushed back on asking prices, even while transaction prices ground upward. It also helps explain why inventory built the way it did, quarter after quarter, without prices breaking.

What Homes Are Worth in America's Largest Cities

Statewide numbers hide a lot of variation, so here is the same window at street level. The table shows the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), a smoothed, seasonally adjusted estimate of the typical home value in the city proper (not the wider metro area), for the five largest cities in the country as of Q2 2026, with the baseline each change is measured against.

New York is the strongest of the five right now, with typical values up 4.1% year over year. Houston sits at the other end at -2.7%. The quarter-by-quarter city numbers, with the same up and down markers, are in the quarterly reports listed further down this page.

Sales, Supply, and Pending Deals

Prices tell you what homes are worth; transactions tell you whether anything is actually moving. Per the Redfin market tracker (all residential, not seasonally adjusted), completed sales in the US averaged 455,722 homes a month in Q2 2026 (down 2.3% from the same months a year earlier), with pending sales running 567,129 a month. The median sale price, what buyers actually paid, averaged $445,950, up 1.6% year over year. At the current sales pace the market holds 3.2 months of supply, which by the common rule of thumb is seller's market territory, and the typical home that sold went under contract in 45 days. Redfin figures for Q2 2026 reflect April and May, the months reported so far; year over year comparisons use the same months a year earlier.

*Partial quarter; see the note above. All change markers compare against the year-earlier baseline shown beneath them.

The Numbers, Quarter by Quarter

What This Means If You're Selling

The data points in two directions at once, and both directions matter.

Your competition has grown 47.2% since 2022

A listing today goes up against far more alternatives than one did in 2022 or early 2023, when active inventory sat near its 586,197 low. Buyers with a million-plus homes to scroll through get picky about price and pickier about condition, and appreciation only becomes money when one of them actually closes.

The equity you built since 2022 is real

National prices are up 15.6% over the window, and annual growth never went negative in any of the 16 quarters. If you have owned your home for a few years, the gain is already banked in your equity whether you sell through an agent, sell direct, or stay put. Slowing growth (3.0% a year as of Q2 2026) does not take back what the 2022-2024 run already added.

Condition decides which buyers show up

With asking prices down 2.1% year over year and inventory elevated, financed buyers can afford to skip houses that are dated, damaged, or complicated. Those houses still sell; they just sell to a different kind of buyer. That is where we come in. EZ Time Home Buyers makes written as-is offers within 24 hours and closes in 2 to 3 weeks with no fees or commissions, and if your house is in solid shape and you have some flexibility on timing, our Retail Buyer Program typically nets more than a typical cash offer. Check where we buy houses, run your numbers through the cash offer calculator, or compare your selling options side by side.

State by State: Our Market Analyses

National averages hide a lot. Over these same 16 quarters, state-level price growth ranged from 5.1% in Arizona to 27.7% in Wisconsin. We publish the same quarter-by-quarter analysis for every state we cover:

• Arizona housing market, the slowest gainer we track at +5.1% over the 16 quarters
• Georgia housing market, up 14.9% since Q3 2022
• Indiana housing market, up 21.4% over the window
• Michigan housing market, up 23.0% across the 16 quarters
• Missouri housing market, up 20.7% since Q3 2022
• North Carolina housing market, up 16.3% over the window
• Ohio housing market, up 23.9% across the 16 quarters
• Oklahoma housing market, up 16.1% since Q3 2022
• Tennessee housing market, up 15.0% over the window
• Texas housing market, up just 6.2% across the 16 quarters
• Virginia housing market, up 21.2% since Q3 2022
• Wisconsin housing market, the strongest of the twelve at +27.7%

Quarterly Market Reports

Every quarter in this analysis has its own report page with that quarter's index reading, listing data, mortgage rate, and city values, including the quarters where the story was very different from today's:

• 2022: Q3 · Q4
• 2023: Q1 · Q2 · Q3 · Q4
• 2024: Q1 · Q2 · Q3 · Q4
• 2025: Q1 · Q2 · Q3 · Q4
• 2026: Q1 · Q2

Data and Methodology

• Price index: FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index for United States, retrieved from FRED (FRED series USSTHPI)
• Listing prices: Realtor.com Housing Inventory: Median Listing Price in United States, retrieved from FRED (FRED series MEDLISPRIUS)
• Inventory: Realtor.com Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in United States, retrieved from FRED (FRED series ACTLISCOUUS)
• Mortgage rate context: Freddie Mac 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average, retrieved from FRED (FRED series MORTGAGE30US)
• City home values: Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), all homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted, city level, retrieved August 26, 2026.
• Sales, pending sales, months of supply, and days on market: Redfin market tracker (monthly, all residential, not seasonally adjusted); transaction counts shown as monthly averages within each quarter, retrieved August 26, 2026.
• Sales, pending sales, months of supply, and days on market: Redfin market tracker (monthly, all residential, not seasonally adjusted); transaction counts shown as monthly averages within each quarter, retrieved August 26, 2026.
• Monthly series are averaged to calendar quarters.
• Data retrieved August 26, 2026. This page reports historical data; it is not a price forecast or investment advice.