UNITED STATES, Sept. 12 (DC Times Online) — Realtor.com’s August housing analysis found that median listing prices per square foot fell year over year in 36 of the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, extending a national decline that has lasted 10 straight months.
The measure tracks asking prices for homes listed for sale, not the prices buyers ultimately paid in completed transactions. It also adjusts for home size, making it different from the overall median listing price.
Nationally, the median listing price per square foot fell 1.8% from August 2025 to August 2026, Realtor.com reported. The figures show where sellers were listing homes at lower prices relative to their size, but they do not establish how much sale prices changed.
Which metros saw the largest declines?
The biggest annual drop was in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, metropolitan area, where the median listing price per square foot fell 8.1%.
The 10 largest declines reported by Realtor.com were:
- Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas: down 8.1%
- Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida: down 5.6%
- Memphis, Tennessee-Mississippi-Arkansas: down 4.1%
- San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, California: down 3.9%
- San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas: down 3.6%
- Denver-Aurora-Centennial, Colorado: down 3.4%
- Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Maryland: down 3.2%
- San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, California: down 2.7%
- Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida: down 2.6%
- Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon-Washington: down 2.4%
The reported median listing prices in these 10 metropolitan areas ranged from $299,995 in Memphis to $908,700 in San Francisco. Those are listing prices for the homes included in the analysis, not confirmed sale prices.
Why does price per square foot matter?
Price per square foot divides a home’s price by its size. For example, a 2,000-square-foot home listed for $400,000 has an asking price of $200 per square foot.
The measure can help compare markets with different mixes of home sizes. But it is still affected by the types of properties listed during a given month, including differences in location, condition and features. Realtor.com’s supplied results do not include the report’s listing counts, sample sizes or margin-of-error information.
Was every region moving lower?
Realtor.com reported that national median listing prices fell year over year in three regions. The Northeast declined 3.6%, the South fell 2.6% and the West fell 2.1%. The Midwest was flat.
The regional figures refer to median listing prices, while the metro ranking above uses median listing price per square foot. Those are related but different measures.
Where did prices rise?
Some large metropolitan areas moved against the national trend. The largest increases in median listing price per square foot were reported in Providence, Rhode Island, up 9.3%; Indianapolis, up 4.4%; and Chicago, up 3.6%.
That contrast means the national decline does not describe every local housing market. Realtor.com’s analysis found lower price per square foot in most of the largest metros, but higher or unchanged figures in others.
What does the report say about the market?
Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel said the common thread in several of the largest-decline markets, including Austin, Tampa, San Antonio and Denver, was that markets that grew rapidly during the 2020-22 housing boom were continuing to give back some of those gains.
Realtor.com described the decline across 36 of the 50 largest metros as evidence that sellers could no longer rely on unusually high asking prices. The report does not, by itself, show whether sellers accepted lower prices, how quickly homes sold or whether buyers faced lower monthly costs.
Those questions require transaction prices, sales volume, inventory and mortgage-rate data. The August analysis focused on listing prices and price per square foot across the largest U.S. metropolitan areas.
