North Carolina Housing Market Analysis: The Last 16 Quarters in Data

North Carolina home prices rose 16.3% over the 16 quarters from Q3 2022 through Q2 2026, according to the FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index retrieved through FRED. The pace has cooled hard, though: the latest year-over-year reading, 2.4% in Q2 2026, is the slowest of the entire window. Meanwhile the median listing price sits at $416,817 per Realtor.com listing data retrieved through FRED, almost exactly where it was four years ago, and the active listing count has climbed to 44,074 homes, up 102.2% across the window. Prices are still inching up. The market underneath them looks nothing like 2022.

How North Carolina Home Prices Have Moved

When this window opens in Q3 2022, the FHFA index for North Carolina stood at 608.7 and was rising 22.0% year over year, the fastest reading in the entire stretch. That pace did not survive the winter. The index slipped to 606.0 in Q4 2022, the only quarter-to-quarter decline in the data, and annual growth fell to 16.2%. By Q1 2023 it was 11.9%. By Q2 2023, 6.7%.

From mid-2023 through the end of 2024 the market settled into a steady grind. Annual growth held between 4.8% and 6.9% for seven straight quarters while the index climbed from 630.1 to 677.3. Then the deceleration resumed: 4.7% in Q1 2025, 3.5% in Q2, then 3.2% and 3.3% to close out the year, and finally 2.6% and 2.4% in the first half of 2026.

Two things stand out. First, growth never went negative: not one of the 16 quarters shows a year-over-year decline in the index, which ended the window at 707.8. Second, the trend has run in one direction since early 2025. A market that was compounding at 22.0% four years ago is now growing at roughly a tenth of that rate.

What Homes Are Listed For

Asking prices tell a flatter story than the price index. The median listing price in North Carolina was $415,833 in Q3 2022 and $416,817 in Q2 2026: four years of movement that ends nearly where it started. The peak came early, at $424,483 in Q2 2023, and no quarter since has matched it.

Underneath the flat trend is a seasonal sawtooth. Listing prices crest in the spring quarters ($424,483 in Q2 2023, $423,167 in Q2 2025) and sag each winter ($396,783 in Q1 2024, $398,149 in Q1 2026). The year-over-year figures are more telling than the level. Median list price growth went negative for all four quarters of 2024, bottoming at -1.4% in Q2, recovered to modest gains through 2025 (0.7% to 1.5%), then turned negative again in 2026: -0.3% in Q1 and -1.5% in Q2, the weakest reading of the window.

That sets up a real tension in the data. The FHFA index, which is built from actual transactions, is up 16.3% over the window; asking prices, which reflect what sellers hope to get and what mix of homes hits the market, have gone sideways and are now slipping. Both things are true at once, and neither one alone describes the market a seller actually walks into.

How Many Homes Are on the Market

Inventory is where North Carolina has genuinely transformed. There were 21,802 active listings in Q3 2022. In Q2 2026 there were 44,074, an increase of 102.2% across the window.

The climb was not a straight line. Inventory tightened through the first half of 2023, bottoming at 18,719 in Q2 2023, and Q3 2023 posted the window's only negative annual reading at -3.6%. From there the count rose almost every quarter: 24,532 by the end of 2023, 31,566 by Q3 2024, 38,691 in Q2 2025, and above 43,000 in the second half of 2025. Growth is now decelerating (annual gains slowed from 46.4% in Q2 2025 to 13.9% in Q2 2026), but it is decelerating from a very high base.

All of this happened against borrowing costs that never really relented. The Freddie Mac 30-year mortgage survey averaged between 6.11% and 7.30% in every quarter from Q4 2022 on, and stood at 6.41% in Q2 2026.

For a seller, the inventory number is the one to internalize. Twice as many active listings means a buyer touring homes in Raleigh, Greensboro, or Fayetteville has twice the choice, and every house gets measured against more alternatives. That does not tell you where prices head next. It does mean pricing mistakes and condition problems get punished faster, and homes wait longer for the right buyer than they did when 21,000 listings covered the whole state.

What Homes Are Worth in North Carolina'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 North Carolina's five largest cities as of Q2 2026, with the baseline each change is measured against.

Winston-Salem is the strongest of the five right now, with typical values up 0.9% year over year. Durham sits at the other end at -3%. 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 North Carolina averaged 13,623 homes a month in Q2 2026 (down 0.2% from the same months a year earlier), with pending sales running 12,813 a month. The median sale price, what buyers actually paid, averaged $396,450, up 2.5% year over year. At the current sales pace the market holds 4.0 months of supply, which by the common rule of thumb is balanced-market territory, and the typical home that sold went under contract in 56 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

Twice the competition changes your timeline

With 44,074 homes on the market versus 21,802 four years ago, a listed house in North Carolina is one option among many. The same inventory rebuild shows up in the national market data, but a doubling is steeper than most sellers expect when they price off a neighbor's 2022 sale. More competition generally shows up as longer marketing time, more price reductions, and buyers who negotiate harder because they can walk to the house down the street.

The equity you built since 2022 is real

The index rose 16.3% across the window and never posted a negative year-over-year quarter. If you bought in or before 2022, appreciation has kept working in your favor even while the headlines focused on the slowdown. Growth of 2.4% is a long way from 22.0%, but it is still growth, and the gains from 2022 through 2024 are already banked in your equity. Sellers who need that equity for a move, a payoff, or an estate settlement are in a stronger position than the current pace of the market might suggest.

Condition decides which buyers show up

A move-in-ready home can compete in a 44,000-listing market. A house that needs a roof, sat vacant for a year, or carries an inherited property's deferred maintenance mostly cannot, because financed buyers and their lenders screen it out early. That is the situation worth pricing out with an as-is sale (here is how selling as-is works). We buy houses across the state, from the Triangle to the coast (see where we buy in North Carolina), with a written cash offer within 24 hours, closing in as little as 2 to 3 weeks, and no fees or commissions. If your home is in decent shape but you still want certainty, our Retail Buyer Program typically nets more than a typical cash offer. Run both numbers against a traditional listing before you decide anything.

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 North Carolina (NCSTHPI), retrieved from FRED.
• Listing prices: Realtor.com Housing Inventory: Median Listing Price in North Carolina (MEDLISPRINC), retrieved from FRED.
• Inventory: Realtor.com Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in North Carolina (ACTLISCOUNC), retrieved from FRED.
• Mortgage rate context: Freddie Mac 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average (MORTGAGE30US), retrieved from FRED.
• 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.