If you’re buying or selling in Seattle, San Jose, or Portland, the “record high home prices” headline you keep reading is a lie about your market. Those three metros are down year over year. The national record does not apply to your ZIP code.
Redfin’s June report, out Monday July 13, put the national median sale price at $408,776, up 2.2% from a year earlier and an all-time high on their tracker. The headline is real. The problem is that the national median is an average of very different local markets moving in opposite directions.
Here is the split Redfin’s own data shows.
Up the most, year over year: San Francisco 9.2%. Pittsburgh 9.1%. West Palm Beach 8.6%. Down the most: Seattle down 4.9%. San Jose down 3.9%. Portland down 1.8%. That is a 14 percentage point gap between San Francisco and Seattle, two coastal metros people usually lump together. Different market, different math, same month.
That gap changes what a smart offer looks like. The average 30-year mortgage rate is 6.55% as of Freddie Mac’s July 16 survey, up from 6.49% the week before. At that rate, a $50,000 swing in purchase price is roughly $315 a month for 30 years, or about $113,000 in total interest and principal on the loan. Not a rounding error.
If you’re bidding at asking in Seattle, you’re bidding on an appraisal that is very likely to come in lower six months later. If you’re bidding at asking in Pittsburgh, comps are still supporting the number. Same behavior, opposite outcome.
Here’s what they’re not telling you at the closing table. National headlines lag local reality by weeks, and your agent probably has a template that leans on the national trend when the local trend cuts against a fast close.
Three moves before you sign anything.
Pull the metro-level year-over-year price change before you make your offer, not after. Redfin, Zillow, and Realtor.com all publish it monthly. Add the 90-day trend, not just the last month, so a single hot week does not skew your read.
Sellers in falling metros: price to move, not to record. If Seattle is down 4.9% and your neighbor sold three months ago at $850,000, your realistic today number is closer to $810,000. Chasing the old comp adds thirty days on market and forces a bigger cut later.
Buyers in falling metros: come in below list and ask for a rate buydown on top. Sellers in Seattle, San Jose, and Portland are watching their competition sit. They will take a serious offer with concessions over a stronger offer that is likely to renegotiate after inspection.
The good news at the national level is small but real. Existing home sales ticked up 0.1% month over month to a rate of roughly 4.4 million, the highest since November 2022. Pending sales rose 0.5% month over month and 4.5% year over year. Momentum exists, but it is slight, and it is not distributed evenly.
If you get told this is a national market, correct the record. It is fifty local markets pretending to be one.
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