Despite the slowdown in the housing market, U.S. home prices have continued to climb, with the median sale price reaching an all-time high of $433,558 in April, up 6.2% from last year, according to a report from Redfin on Friday.
That said, that number was only slightly higher than the last peak in May 2022, when prices hit $432,542, according to the report.
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The rise in home prices is due to a housing crunch, with many homeowners choosing to sit out the market rather than forgo their pre-runup mortgage rates, in addition to the overall national shortage in housing.
New listings remain roughly 20% below pre-pandemic levels, despite increasing 10.8% in April on an annual basis. Though to put that annual increase in context, last April had the least new listings on record with the exception of spring 2020 when the pandemic took hold.
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The bump in housing prices is reflected nationwide, with all 50 of the nation’s most populours metros showing price increases in April, according to a separate Redfin report released in early May, though there is still tremendous variation in how much they were increasing.
Five Florida markets made the list of top-10 cities with the fastest growing home prices, with Miami Beach taking the top spot, posting a 40.9% increase in prices over last year. Non-Florida cities in the top 10 included Honolulu; Charleston, South Carolina; and two in the Midwest—Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Milwaukee.
Alexandria, Virginia, was the only city to make the top 10 for fastest price growth, as well as the most competitive, coming in fourth, while San Jose, California, took the top spot for competitiveness. Nationally, 33.5% of homes were sold above asking, roughly in line with last year, while 17.5% of listings cut prices, up from 12% in April 2023.
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On the whole, however, the migration patterns that reached their peak during the pandemic have continued unabated, with the large metropolitan areas losing out to states in the Sun Belt and South, according to searches on Redfin. Between February and April of this year, the most popular destinations were Phoenix; Sacramento, California; Sarasota, Florida; Las Vegas; and Cape Coral, Florida.On the flip side, Los Angeles residents made the top of the list for those exiting, followed by New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
While mortgage rates are up slightly from last year, hitting 7% at the last measure, inflation numbers released this week showed some moderation, suggesting that mortgage rates could follow suit.
