The typical home listed in the West carried an asking price of $595,000 in September, while the typical Midwest listing asked $320,000, Realtor.com reported. The $275,000 gap is the widest between any two of the four regions in its release. Asking prices slipped from a year earlier in the West by 0.8 percent, in the South by 2.4 percent and in the Northeast by 3.8 percent, and the Midwest median came in flat. The national median list price was $419,250.
Anyone trying to guess what a house might list for needs a local anchor more than a national one. The four regions sit at very different levels: $505,000 in the Northeast, $379,000 in the South, $320,000 in the Midwest and $595,000 in the West. A typical Western listing asks about 86 percent more than a typical Midwest one, and the Northeast sits $185,000 above the Midwest. The national median describes few local markets in particular.
Realtor.com re-runs these regional median list prices every month, and the Midwest’s $320,000 was unchanged from a year earlier.
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How the four regions compare
In Realtor.com’s September regional table, the Northeast median list price was $505,000, down 3.8 percent from a year earlier, the steepest decline of the four regions. The South came in at $379,000, down 2.4 percent. The West’s $595,000 was down 0.8 percent, and the release says the Midwest’s $320,000 was flat for a second consecutive month. Price per square foot moved differently: it rose 1.7 percent in the Midwest and fell 1.1 percent in the West.
The Midwest combines a flat asking price with a rising price per square foot. The South shows both falling, with the median down 2.4 percent and the price per square foot down 2.8 percent. The national price per square foot was $223, down 1.7 percent from a year earlier. Realtor.com’s figures cover existing single-family homes along with condos, townhouses and co-ops, so the Midwest and West medians describe the same kinds of properties.
Cheaper and costlier metros inside each region
Tucson, at $372,500, is the cheapest western metro among the 50 in the table, and it still asks more than Cincinnati ($347,000), Indianapolis ($310,000), St. Louis ($285,950), Detroit ($274,950) and Cleveland ($259,900). At the other end, San Jose’s median list price of $1,388,472 is more than three times the $407,500 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the costliest Midwest metro in the table. Pittsburgh, at $245,000, had the lowest median list price of the 50 metros, and Los Angeles, at $1,034,500, was the second highest after San Jose. The regional medians sit between those extremes and hide how wide each region’s own range is.
The Midwest’s flat reading blends opposite moves. Chicago’s median list price rose 4.6 percent to $389,450, and Cincinnati and Kansas City each rose less than 1 percent, while Indianapolis fell 4.1 percent, Minneapolis-St. Paul fell 4.1 percent and St. Louis fell 4.7 percent. In the West, Los Angeles fell 5.9 percent to $1,034,500 and San Diego fell 6.3 percent to $888,450, while San Jose rose 1.7 percent. A flat region can contain markets moving several percent in either direction, and Boston ($784,778) and New York ($742,000) show that the Northeast has its own high end.
Price cuts and supply by region
Price cuts were most common in the West, where 22.8 percent of listings were reduced, up 1.8 points from a year earlier. The South followed at 21.6 percent, the Midwest at 20.7 percent, up 1.5 points, and the Northeast at 15.2 percent, up 1.2. The $275,000 difference in asking prices between the West and the Midwest comes with only a 2.1-point difference in how often sellers have cut, which means markdowns are happening at both ends of the price range.
Supply is growing fastest in the Northeast and Midwest, where active listings rose 11.6 percent and 11.3 percent from a year earlier. The West rose 6.2 percent and the South 2.6 percent. Jake Krimmel, a senior economist at Realtor.com, said demand is cooling in response to higher borrowing costs and not because a new wave of sellers is entering the market. New listings were down 0.7 percent nationally, in line with that description.
Checking a home’s price against its region
A list price is a seller’s ask, not a sale price. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s House Price Index tracks price changes on the same properties over time, using repeat mortgage transactions, and publishes them for the nation, census divisions, states and metro areas. The agency’s schedule lists the next monthly index for October 27, covering data through August, and the quarterly index for November 24.
Mortgage rates remain the main swing factor behind the cooling. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 7.40 percent on October 8, up from 6.30 percent a year earlier. Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale said buyers are gaining leverage, but that higher rates limit how much of it they can use. That pairing, more leverage and less buying power, is the backdrop for every regional number in the September table.
Realtor.com says the gap between current inventory and typical pre-pandemic levels narrowed to 9.1 percent in September. The next regional table arrives with the company’s October report. If the West’s $595,000 keeps sliding while the Midwest holds at $320,000, the $275,000 gap will narrow with no Midwest price gain at all, and the first sign will be in that table.
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This article was prepared with AI assistance from cited public sources and reviewed before publication.
