The median new house sold in September went for $400,400, the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported on October 27 in their joint new residential sales release. That is $15,000 above August’s $385,400 and $16,400 below September 2025’s $416,800. Both moves sit inside the release’s own margins of error, which makes the dollar level sturdier than the direction it seems to point.
A 3.9 percent rise and a 3.9 percent fall in one release
Census puts the monthly change at 3.9 percent above August, with a margin of error of plus or minus 6.2 percent. The comparison with September 2025 is 3.9 percent below, with a margin of plus or minus 8.9 percent. Each margin is larger than the change it qualifies.
The figures come from a survey sample, not a count of every closing. Census’s technical documentation says sampling error reflects the fact that only a particular sample was surveyed rather than the entire population, and it builds 90 percent intervals around each estimate. A 3.9 percent move against a 6.2 percent margin is not a measured change in the usual statistical sense.
For a homeowner thinking about a move, the usable fact is the level, not the arrow. A new single-family house in this survey sold at a midpoint of $400,400 in September, and half of the houses sold for less. Whether that midpoint is higher or lower than a year ago is a question these estimates cannot settle.
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Median $400,400, average $472,800: what separates them
Census also reports an average new-house price, $472,800 in September, which sits $72,400 above the median. Its definitions page describes the median as the middle point value of all values reported, using the sales price of new one-family houses as the example. A handful of expensive sales lifts an average without touching that middle point.
The average rose 0.4 percent from August’s $470,800, with a margin of plus or minus 6.1 percent. Against September 2025’s $506,800 it fell 6.7 percent, with a margin of plus or minus 6.6 percent. That year-over-year drop is the one price comparison in the release whose change just clears its margin.
The distance between the two measures has also narrowed. A year earlier the average of $506,800 stood $90,000 above the median of $416,800, while in September the gap was $72,400. The average fell by $34,000 against the median’s $16,400, so it gave up more than twice as many dollars, though the release attaches wide margins to both comparisons.
The average is therefore the stronger evidence of a yearly price decline, while the median is the better picture of a typical sale. The $16,400 gap between the median and its year-ago level is real arithmetic, but the 8.9 percent margin is more than twice the 3.9 percent change it accompanies.
A 676,000 sales pace sits under the price
Prices were set in a month when new houses sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 676,000. That is 0.6 percent below August’s 680,000 and 5.3 percent below September 2025’s 714,000. Census attaches margins of plus or minus 13.8 percent and plus or minus 12.5 percent to those changes.
Sales pace and price are separate estimates, and the release does not say why one moved as it did. A median can climb when more of the houses that closed were larger or pricier, as easily as when builders raise prices. The report states what sold, not what buyers or builders intended.
The rate is also an annualization. Census defines the seasonally adjusted annual rate as the seasonally adjusted monthly value multiplied by 12, so 676,000 describes a pace and not a count of September closings.
Preliminary figures that Census revises for three months
Every number here is a preliminary estimate. Census’s methodology page says three months of data are revised along with the release of each month’s preliminary estimates, so September’s $400,400 can change when later monthly releases arrive.
History has been rewritten before. Census’s new residential sales page notes that tables holding historical median and average sales prices were revised for the period between January 2020 and March 2024.
A $416,800 median a year ago and a $400,400 median now are therefore two estimates, each with sampling error and each open to revision. Stating them side by side is accurate. Calling the gap a price cut is not something the release supports.
What a new-house median can and cannot measure for an owner’s own move
The median covers new single-family houses sold, not resale houses. A homeowner who sets a possible downsizing against $400,400 is comparing a midpoint of new construction with a house built years earlier, in another place, with its own tax and insurance bills.
That comparison is still worth making, because the September report supplies a stated level for new houses, error bars included. What it cannot supply is the resale value of any particular house, and no national median can. The number to work out is the owner’s own.
What does downsizing cost now?
A national median describes what new houses cost to buy. It says nothing about what an owner’s own house costs to keep or what it could fetch, and the gap between the two is where a downsizing decision sits.
Housing statistics have no product of their own, so the turn here is to the owner’s side of the ledger. Cut Your House Costs covers a lower home insurance bill by shopping and asking for every discount, home equity options compared from a HELOC to a reverse mortgage, and the home-cost audit worksheet.
The guide runs 11 pages, and the audit worksheet is one of its core parts, alongside a large-print edition.
Get the home-cost audit worksheet and the equity options side by side →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
