People waiting for high mortgage rates to push home prices down will have to keep waiting, at least for now.
The national median existing-home price rose just 1.5% from a year earlier, after a long stretch of weak demand and elevated mortgage rates. In the first quarter, that national gain was just 0.5%. Prices spent most of the winter and spring stuck below 1%.
This report tracks existing homes, meaning homes that have been lived in before. New construction is not included. The median is the middle price in a market, not the average of every sale. Because a median looks at the midpoint of all sales, it is less skewed by a handful of luxury transactions.
The Midwest was not far behind the Northeast, with prices up 3.6%. The South saw a 1% increase. The West was the only region to decline, slipping 0.8%.
Local markets varied even more sharply.
California still holds the most expensive big-market spots. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara had a median existing single-family-home price of $2.05 million, down 4.2% from a year earlier. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward came next at $1.5 million, with prices up 5.2%.
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The gap between those California markets shows that even in the same state, the direction can be very different. That is what a local housing market looks like.
For anyone who remembers the pandemic-era housing market, these gains look tame. Prices climbed by double digits throughout 2021. Parts of 2020 were also hot.
Parts of 2022 ran hot too. A 1.5% national gain looks almost sleepy by comparison.
The market's mood has changed. Buyers are not chasing homes with the same urgency, and sellers cannot automatically count on bidding wars. Price changes are becoming a local story.
A home in the Northeast is gaining value faster than one in the West. A home in the South can still surprise.
The second-quarter data comes from closed sales, so it reflects contracts signed mainly in the spring. That timing matters because buyer demand was uneven as mortgage rates moved over those months.
For your portfolio, the housing market is not a crash story right now. It is a slow, uneven climb, and the national average only tells part of the story.
If you live in the Northeast, your home may be gaining value at a healthier clip. If you live in the West, the market still looks like it is cooling.
For buyers, the math remains tough. Even a small national price gain adds to the cost of a house, and mortgage rates have not fallen enough to provide much relief. Affordability is the real issue to watch.
For investors, housing is a quiet signal about consumer confidence. When prices rise in most metro areas, it suggests buyers still feel secure enough to take on a big mortgage. When the West goes negative, it is a reminder that expensive markets cannot climb forever.
The next quarter will show whether this pick-up has staying power. For now, the story is less about a booming market and more about a market finding a balance that works for buyers and sellers.
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