For most of the last five years, buyers got beat up. That just flipped.
About a third of America's biggest cities saw home prices fall in the first three months of 2026. Florida and the Sun Belt are leading the drop.
Florida's Cape Coral-Fort Myers area led the drops. Its median sale price fell 9% to $341,250.
That market peaked in early 2023, per data from the Fed of St. Louis. Ocala, Lakeland-Winter Haven, and the Naples-Marco Island area are also rolling back, per ATTOM.
Austin and other Sun Belt cities that ran hot in the boom are also slowing. Realtor.com's Jake Krimmel told CBS the cities falling now are mostly the same ones that ran the most.
He called it less of a bust and more "a come-down or back to reality."
Florida home owners pay the highest home rates in the US. Insurify says the average rate in Florida jumped 18% last year to $8,292.
In some Florida counties, the bills are far worse. Monroe County alone runs over $22,000 a year.
Bryce Ocepek is a Coldwell Banker broker in north Florida. He told CBS he sees owners list just because they got dropped by their plan.
Some got hit with a new bill they could not pay. Storm risk and flood-zone tests are pulling some homes off the buy list, he said.
A new poll from Florida Atlantic shows nearly half of Floridians may leave the state due to costs. About 8 in 10 of those polled said they are worried about home costs.
Some sellers say their plan got dropped after a storm hit. Some had a flood-zone test that pushed the home off the map for buyers.
Not every market is cooling. Detroit jumped about 17% in the first quarter to $259,000.
The Rust Belt did not run up in the boom, so values have more room. Mortgage rates are now near 6.3%, per Freddie Mac.
That is not the 3% rate buyers got in the boom. But it is well below the 6.8% they got a year ago.
April was the sixth straight month of year-over-year list price drops, Krimmel said. Sellers are coming in with prices that match the market they are in.
He told CBS the broader market is also tilting more buyer-friendly this spring. There is cheaper money, more homes for sale, and softer prices all at once.
The biggest factor for a buyer right now is not the rate. It is the zip code.
The drops are sharp where they are sharp. The lifts are real where they are real.
The whole map is local now. The same week can be a buy in Detroit and a wait in Cape Coral.
