The boom has held almost everywhere: the median metro's home value is up about 50 percent since January 2020 and was still at its high in August 2026. It has reversed in one metro out of seven, and those metros sit mostly in the South and West, led by Texas and Florida. For a lender deciding where to grow, the recommendation is to expand in metros that are still at their peak with steady gains, in the Northeast and Midwest above all, and to hold new volume in any metro that is more than 5 percent below its peak until its value has stopped falling.
The median metro is up half since January 2020 and is still rising
The median home value across the 894 metros rose from $169,626 in January 2020 to $255,438 in August 2026, a gain of 50.6 percent, and August 2026 is the highest month in the series. The median of each metro's own change over the period is 49.9 percent. The pace has slowed rather than reversed: the median value grew 3.4 percent over the twelve months to August 2026, against gains of 13.6 percent in 2021 and 9.1 percent in 2022, December to December. Nothing in the national line says boom over.
Median home value across metros, by month
The reversal is a Southern and Western story
Every region gained over the period, with the median metro up 59.1 percent in the Northeast, 53.6 percent in the Midwest, 47.0 percent in the South, and 46.9 percent in the West. The difference is in what has happened since the peak. One Southern metro in four (90 of 358) and one Western metro in five (34 of 174) is more than 5 percent below its highest value since 2020. In the Northeast and Midwest that is true of 2 metros out of 89 and 2 out of 273. Texas has 28 metros below their peak and Florida 20, more than any other state.
Share of metros more than 5% below their peak, by region
Among the 50 largest metros, Hartford leads and Austin has given back the most
Hartford, CT gained 71.4 percent since January 2020 and was at its high in August 2026. Austin, TX gained 26.3 percent over the same period but is 26.8 percent below its June 2022 peak, the largest drop among the large metros, followed by New Orleans (11.8 percent below peak), Phoenix (11.2 percent), San Antonio (10.1 percent), and Denver (9.0 percent). Fifteen of the 49 large metros in the file are more than 5 percent below their peak, a higher share than among smaller metros (11.6 and 13.7 percent in the two smaller tiers), so the reversal is concentrated in the markets that boomed hardest.
Distance from peak since 2020: the 20 largest drops among the 50 largest metros
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About the data
Where the data come from. Zillow Research publishes the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) at zillow.com/research/data. The file used here is the all-homes, middle-tier, smoothed, seasonally adjusted series for metro areas, which Zillow publishes as one wide file with a column per month. It was reshaped in Python so that one row is one metro in one month, and the census region and size tier were added from the state and from Zillow's size rank.
What one row is. One US metro area in one month, with Zillow's typical home value for that metro in that month, from January 2015 to August 2026. The file holds 894 metros and 124,619 rows.
What is dropped. The United States total row, because it is not a metro, and all months before January 2015, to keep the file small. Metros with no value in a month have no row for that month.
How each summary number is computed, over the metros that pass the filters and the months in the range, which on this page is every metro from January 2020 to August 2026. Metros in view is the number of metros with at least one row in the range. Median home value, last month is the median across those metros of the home value in the last month of the range. Median change over the range takes each metro's value in the last month of the range divided by its value in the first month, minus one, and reports the median of those changes. Metros more than 5% below peak is the share of metros whose value in the last month of the range is more than 5 percent below that metro's highest value inside the range. The size tiers are Zillow's size rank: the 50 largest metros, ranks 51 to 200, and 201 and up; one of the top 50 has no values in the file, so 49 appear.