Declining Home Prices Mapped: 95 Cities with Falling Prices

Heard nothing but doom and gloom in the real estate headlines for the last 18 months?

The wild 50+% price jumps we saw during the pandemic are a distant memory, while 2022 and early 2023 saw real estate markets drop  back down to earth. They did exactly what markets are supposed to do: they corrected. 

Does that mean they’ve finished correcting? Not necessarily, but the worst of the decline in home prices appears behind us. Consider that as of last quarter, 224 cities saw quarterly declines in home values. In the second quarter, only 95 cities saw real estate price declines. 

In fact, over half of the 200 cities that saw prices decline in the last year have since bottomed out and started appreciating in value again.

Cities with Dropping Home Prices

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is an interactive map worth?

Of the roughly 900 U.S. cities tracked by Zillow, 95 of them saw a fall in house prices in the second quarter of 2023. That’s a sharp improvement over the first quarter, when 224 cities had falling real estate values, and the fourth quarter of 2022 (253 declining markets).

Without further ado, the U.S. cities seeing quarterly home value declines are:

Clearly, some previously ebullient housing markets are still correcting to more sustainable levels. But how do these quarterly changes compare to annual home price trends?

200 Cities Saw Prices Fall Annually

Looking back over the last year, exactly 200 U.S. cities experienced a decline in home values:

Again, that’s out of roughly 900 U.S. cities and towns that Zillow tracks.

What does it mean that fewer cities saw quarterly declines than annual declines? It means that the correction — the dip — is starting to pass. Some markets that saw home prices dip over the last year have since bottomed out and started appreciating again. 

Will that trend continue? My crystal ball is no clearer than yours, but barring some unforeseen crisis, I suspect it will. 

Keep your finger on the pulse of real estate markets and housing corrections nationwide as you navigate investing in this weird economy. Check out Rentometer to analyze the rental market in any location.

What About Declining Rents?

 The headlines about rent declines are even more overblown than property price declines.

Of the roughly 350 U.S. cities that Zillow consistently tracks rent data for, just 35 saw rents decline in the second quarter of 2023. Take a look at the interactive map:

Year over year, just 14 cities have seen rents fall. Hardly the collapse in rents that many activists wanted. Check out those 14 cities on the map below:

Rents rarely fall, even during recessions. In this particular case, rents in some cities overshot the local market fundamentals. They rose too far, too fast, just like property values in some cities.

That’s led to a few rental market corrections. But not many.

Check out Rentometer to run rental market reports for any residential property, and determine market rents.

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Why Did House Prices Decline in the First Place?

Two hundred of the formerly hottest housing markets in the pandemic fell back down to earth over the last year. It doesn’t take a senior economist to understand that they shot up too far, too fast, and now they’re correcting back to what local incomes can support.

“Monetary stimulus during COVID distorted the real estate market,” explains Andrew Lokenauth, founder of Fluent in Finance. “Interest rates were at historic lows. Now with monetary stimulus being withdrawn, home prices will gradually decline. Areas that saw the greatest speculation and increase in prices will see the greatest decrease in prices. Areas that saw moderate price increases will see prices flatten out or decrease slightly.”

Because, ultimately, people have to be able to afford their homes. When housing prices stray too far from local median incomes, expect real estate prices to drop. Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, warned that 97% of the nation’s cities are “overvalued” compared to local incomes. Of the 392 markets they analyzed, 149 are overvalued by at least 25%. Zandi expects the most overpriced housing markets to fall as much as 10% over the next year.

But a disconnect from local fundamentals isn’t the only reason median prices are dipping in some markets.

The Role of Rising Interest Rates

When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, it puts upward pressure on mortgage rates. That, in turn, drives up the cost to own real estate in the form of higher monthly payments for the same loan amount.

Which means people just can’t afford to pay as much for properties.

Mortgage interest rates started 2022 at around 3%, then shot up over 7% by November. Mortgage rates closed the year around 6.5%, marking a huge leap in monthly costs for homebuyers and real estate investors alike. Consider that a 30-year $400,000 loan at 3% interest costs $1,686 per month, while the same loan at 6% costs $2,398. Interest alone added over $700 to the monthly mortgage payment!

At a 6% interest rate, a family could only borrow around $280,000 if they wanted a similar monthly payment ($1,679). So, rising interest rates force buyers to either pay cash, offer less, look at cheaper homes, or sit on the sidelines and continue renting.

None of which push up property prices. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

Real Estate Prices to Drop Further?

In many markets, house price growth will likely just slow down and level off. High borrowing costs will continue suppressing demand for homes, and driving a drop in prices in some markets.

But in the cities where home prices skyrocketed by 40​​–50% annually during the pandemic? Those are likely headed downward, between 5–20%. They overshot what local prospective buyers can afford, and now comes the correction.

Remote work plays a role as well, in multiple ways. Some people (like me!) will never work in a traditional office again. “With the workforce moving increasingly towards hybrid and remote workplaces, many people are moving out of cities and into less dense areas, investing in more rural real estate,” explains Matt Woods, CEO of SOLD.com.

But the reversal of remote work is also at play. Plenty of employees are heading back to the office, which means that all those beach and mountain getaways where people holed up during the pandemic might surrender some of their price gains.

Underlying these population movements, the US still has a housing shortage, and it’s not evenly distributed. Don’t expect home prices to crash 20​​–35% as they did after the housing bubble of the Great Recession.

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The (Continued) Housing Shortage

The statistics vary, depending on who you ask. But here are a few to chew on.

Moody’s Analytics estimates the housing shortage in the US at 1.6 million housing units. Mark Zandi put it like this: “It’s very difficult to know precisely what the shortage is. But the bottom line is, no matter what the estimate is, it’s a lot of homes that we’re undersupplied.”

A report by Up for Growth calculated the housing shortage at more than double that figure, at 3.79 million housing units. But that shortage isn’t evenly distributed across the US. Some markets have plenty of housing to meet local demand, while others have nowhere near enough. Check out this map breaking down housing undersupply by state:

Real estate platform Homelight notes that 12.3 million households were formed between January 2012 and June 2021, but only 7 million new housing units were built. That leaves a shortfall of over five million homes. (For more details, check out their breakdown of why the US has a housing shortage.)

Don’t expect housing supply to jump any time soon, either. Housing starts have declined for five consecutive months, entering 2023 near their lowest level since August 2020.

Fret Over the Fall in House Prices?

The US still needs more housing, so don’t expect declining home prices to freefall into a 2008-style housing crash nationwide. Still, some markets saw home prices spike too far, too fast, and are now adjusting back to reality.

One piece of good news? Rents seldom dip, so rental properties are largely recession-proof. Rent growth has slowed, but don’t expect rents to collapse any time soon. In Rentometer’s quarterly rent report, they show 96% of US cities saw rising rents last year, over half (52%) by double digits.

Keep an eye on your home real estate market’s trends. But most of all, watch out for flipping houses right now, and stick with a long-term buy and hold strategy. You can forecast long-term cash flow accurately with a rental income calculator — the same can’t be said for predicting appreciation.♦

Where do you expect real estate prices to drop? Why?

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About the Author

G. Brian Davis is a real estate investor and cofounder of SparkRental who spends 10 months of the year in South America. His mission: to help 5,000 people reach financial independence with passive income from real estate. If you want to be one of them, join Brian and Deni for a free class on How to Earn 15-30% on Fractional Real Estate Investments.