Asking Prices Fell in 36 of the 50 Largest Metros in August. The National Median Listing Is $424,500.

The national median asking price for a home was $424,500 in August, 1.3% lower than a year earlier, according to Realtor.com's monthly housing report. Measured per square foot — which strips out the effect of larger or smaller homes coming to market — prices fell 1.8% year over year, the tenth consecutive month of annual declines.

The national figure understates how widespread the softening is. Asking prices per square foot fell year over year in 36 of the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in August.

Where prices fell fastest

• Austin: -8.1%
• Tampa: -5.6%
• Memphis: -4.1%
• San Francisco: -3.9%
• San Diego: -2.7%
• Portland: -2.4%

Jake Krimmel, a senior economist at Realtor.com, said of the metros on that list that "these are also, by and large, places with much more inventory now than pre-pandemic norms." Median list prices fell year over year in three of the four census regions — the Northeast, South and West — while the Midwest held steady.

Supply is rebuilding unevenly

Active listings reached 1.14 million in August, up 3.6% from a year earlier. That national number hides a wide regional spread: inventory grew 10.5% year over year in the Midwest and just 1.1% in the South. Homes took a median of 60 days to sell, unchanged from August 2025.

About one in five listings carried a price reduction, the same share as a year ago. Those cuts were concentrated in the West and South, where roughly 21% to 22% of listings had been marked down, against 14.1% in the Northeast.

Sellers are not walking away this time

One number moved against the general direction. Delistings — homes pulled off the market without selling — fell 12.6% from August 2025. In a cooling market, delistings usually rise as sellers give up and wait. Krimmel framed the divergence as a change in seller behaviour: "sellers are still showing more patience than they did during last year's late-summer delisting wave."

Pending sales, meanwhile, fell year over year for the first time since November 2025. Danielle Hale, Realtor.com's chief economist, described August as showing "a housing market entering its seasonal cool-down with less momentum than it had earlier this year."

How to read the two price measures

Median list price and median list price per square foot answer different questions. The headline median moves when the mix of homes on the market changes — a month with more large suburban listings pushes it up even if nothing is cheaper. Price per square foot controls for that, which is why it is the cleaner read on direction. In August the two agreed: down 1.3% and down 1.8% respectively.

This article is for informational purposes and is not advice about buying, selling or financing a home.