U.S. home prices gained momentum in June, but sharply different results across major metropolitan areas underscore how little the national figure says about an originator’s local purchase market.
Home prices increased 0.3% from May on a seasonally adjusted basis, tying the previous month for the fastest monthly growth since January, according to the Redfin Home Price Index. Prices rose 3% from a year earlier, marking the strongest annual increase in 10 months.
The index uses repeat sales to measure changes in single-family home values. June’s results cover the three months ending June 30.
Prices rose in 30 of the 49 major metropolitan areas included in Redfin’s analysis and declined in 19. Columbus, Ohio, recorded the largest monthly increase at 1.2%, followed by Miami at 1.1%, and Cincinnati and Kansas City, Missouri, at 1% each.
San Francisco posted the largest monthly decline at 1%, followed by Baltimore at 0.8%. Prices fell 0.4% in San Antonio, Denver, and Phoenix.
The divergent results create substantially different purchase environments for mortgage originators. Lenders operating in appreciating markets continue to face affordability pressure from rising prices and elevated borrowing costs. In markets where prices are declining, buyers may have greater room to negotiate seller concessions or financing incentives.
Luxury Demand Lifts National Growth
Redfin attributed some of June’s national price growth to an active luxury market, where prices are increasing three times faster than non-luxury home prices.
Affluent buyers have continued purchasing despite high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty, giving them an outsized influence on national appreciation. That distinction matters for lenders because stronger headline price growth does not necessarily indicate that demand has improved evenly among the rate-sensitive borrowers who account for much of the mortgage market.
Redfin also reported that the country still has hundreds of thousands more home sellers than buyers. Even so, agents in several markets say the supply of affordable, move-in-ready properties remains insufficient to meet demand.
That mismatch helped push national home prices to a record high. It also suggests that the inventory problem is increasingly concentrated by property condition, price point, and location rather than reflected solely in the total number of homes for sale.
“This summer’s home sellers and buyers should pay close attention to local trends; every housing market is definitely not equal,” said Sheharyar Bokhari, a senior economist at Redfin. “Sellers in strong buyer’s markets like Nashville or Austin, for instance, should recognize that while prices are rising to record highs nationwide, that’s not necessarily the case in their area; they may need to price lower than they want to attract buyers. But sellers in places with tighter inventory and strong demand from wealthy buyers, like San Francisco, hold more negotiating power and can likely command higher prices.”
Annual Results Reveal A Divided Market
The gap among markets was even wider on an annual basis.
San Francisco recorded the strongest year-over-year increase at 10.8%, which Redfin attributed largely to the region’s artificial intelligence boom. Nassau County, New York, followed at 10.1%, while prices rose 9.9% in Chicago, 9.3% in Cleveland, and 8.8% in Milwaukee.
At the other end of the index, prices declined 2.7% annually in San Antonio, 1.8% in Jacksonville, Florida, 1.7% in Austin, 1.6% in Dallas, and 1.4% in Phoenix.
Redfin said prices are declining in those markets because the number of sellers significantly exceeds the number of buyers. Some sellers are reducing asking prices to attract interest, while buyers are negotiating prices lower.
For originators, those regional differences may matter more than the acceleration in the national index. Appreciation in inventory-constrained or luxury-driven markets can further limit the pool of financeable demand, while declining prices in buyer-friendly markets may create more opportunities to structure deals around concessions, temporary rate buydowns, and other affordability tools.
The June results indicate that the purchase market is not moving uniformly toward recovery. Instead, local inventory, borrower wealth, and negotiating leverage are producing distinctly different lending conditions from one metropolitan area to the next.
