The Long Cooldown in U.S. Home Prices (2026)
From a record pandemic-era surge back to a normal pace, without a national crash. Home-price growth, year by year.
Key findings
- U.S. home-price growth peaked at +17.4% year over year around 2021, at the height of the pandemic housing boom.
- As of July 2026 it had cooled to +2.6%, a slowdown of 14.8 percentage points from the peak.
- Growth did not go negative nationally; it decelerated from a once-in-a-generation surge back toward a normal, low-single-digit pace.
- These are index percent changes on repeat sales, tracking how fast prices rose each year rather than their dollar level.
The pandemic housing boom was historic, and so has been its comedown. This traces U.S. home-price growth year by year on the FHFA purchase-only index, from 2013 through the latest reading in July 2026, measured as the change over the prior year at each point. Growth rocketed to a peak around 2021 and has since glided back toward a normal pace, without the national price declines some expected. An index tracks price change relative to a base period, not dollar price levels.
From boom to normal
U.S. home-price growth, year by year
| Category | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|
| 2013 | 6.7% |
| 2014 | 4.72% |
| 2015 | 5.32% |
| 2016 | 6.01% |
| 2017 | 6.19% |
| 2018 | 5.29% |
| 2019 | 5.84% |
| 2020 | 11.64% |
| 2021 | 17.4% |
| 2022 | 6.07% |
| 2023 | 6.54% |
| 2024 | 4.91% |
| 2025 | 2.15% |
| July 2026 | 2.56% |
Year by year
| Period | Year-over-year |
|---|---|
| 2013 | +6.7% |
| 2014 | +4.7% |
| 2015 | +5.3% |
| 2016 | +6.0% |
| 2017 | +6.2% |
| 2018 | +5.3% |
| 2019 | +5.8% |
| 2020 | +11.6% |
| 2021 | +17.4% |
| 2022 | +6.1% |
| 2023 | +6.5% |
| 2024 | +4.9% |
| 2025 | +2.1% |
| July 2026 | +2.6% |
FHFA purchase-only U.S. index, year-over-year change at each December (and the latest month). Index percent change, not dollar prices.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
FHFA House Price Index (HPI)
- Publisher:
- Federal Housing Finance Agency
- Vintage:
- 2026
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- monthly
The Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index measures changes in single-family home values using a repeat-sales method on mortgages acquired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The master file carries every published series: monthly indexes for the nation and the nine Census divisions, and quarterly indexes for states and metropolitan areas, in multiple index types, back to the 1970s.
The HPI is a weighted repeat-sales index: it tracks price changes on the same homes over time using mortgage transactions acquired or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Values are index levels relative to a base period, not dollar prices.
Monthly indexes are published for the United States and the nine Census divisions; state and metropolitan-area indexes are quarterly. Both seasonally adjusted and not-seasonally-adjusted series are provided.
Price growth is computed as the percent change in the index between two periods. Because it is an index, comparisons are about rate of change, not absolute price levels between places.
- The purchase-only and standard indexes cover only homes with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgages, so cash sales and homes financed outside the enterprises are not included.
- It is an index of price change, not a measure of dollar price levels, so two places with the same index are not equally expensive.
- Monthly detail exists only for the nation and Census divisions; state and metro series are quarterly.
- Recent periods can be revised as more transactions are reported.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Repeat-sales price index (not a count or dollar level)
- Weighting:
- Repeat-sales weighting of enterprise-acquired mortgages
Suggested citation
Federal Housing Finance Agency, House Price Index, 2026. Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-24.