vs Last Quarter
+$2,100
Mild quarterly climb. Inventory still tight.
Median U.S. Home Sale Price
National Quarterly · Census / HUD
$
0
+$2,100 vs. last quarter ($436,400)
Past 12 months
$425K – $440K
vs Last Year+$8,400
5-Yr Avg$405,000
All-Time High$442,600
Prices climbed $2,100 this quarter, holding near the all-time high. With mortgages at 6.78%, a 20%-down buyer on a median home faces ~$2,283/mo in principal and interest alone — before taxes and insurance.
Historical trend
Quarterly Census / HUD release.
Source: FRED · MSPUS
The long view: since 1963
Sixty years of U.S. home prices — the 2008 crash + 2020 surge are the two big features.
Peak $442,600 · Q4 2022
Trough $15,300 · Q1 1963
Today $438,500
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
+$8,400
Up 2.0% from Q1 2025 — roughly tracking inflation.
5-Year Average
$405,000
Today is $33,500 above the 5-yr mean.
vs Q4 2022 Peak
−$4,100
Still 0.9% below the all-time high.
Use this price
Tools that work with $438,500 as your baseline.
About the Median U.S. Home Sale Price
This is the median sale price of houses sold in the United States, computed quarterly by the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development. Median means the middle data point — half of all U.S. homes sold for less than this number, half sold for more. It's a better measure of "what a typical home costs" than the mean, which gets pulled up by ultra-expensive coastal sales.
What this number does and doesn't tell you
This is a national figure. Your local market may bear no resemblance to it. Median price in Buffalo is ~$210K. Median price in San Jose is ~$1.55M. Median price in Detroit is ~$95K. Use this national number as a backdrop, not a benchmark for your specific market — your county's recorder of deeds or Zillow's market reports will give you something local and useful. The most useful thing this number tells you is the direction: home prices climbing, falling, or stuck.
Reading this chart
The chart since 1963 shows the long arc of U.S. residential real estate. Prices rose ~24× from 1963 to 2024 — but most of that is inflation. In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, home prices roughly doubled. The two clearly visible regimes are the 2005–07 housing bubble (peak $257K, then crash to $208K) and the 2020–22 COVID surge (up 37% in 24 months — the fastest run-up in U.S. history). The post-2022 plateau reflects high mortgage rates suppressing demand while inventory remains historically tight.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
Mean (average) is pulled up by expensive coastal sales. The U.S. mean home price is ~$520K, while the median is ~$438K. Median is more useful for "what a typical home costs" — half sold for less, half for more.
Zillow ZHVI estimates the value of all U.S. homes (whether sold or not), currently around $360K. This Census measure tracks actual sale prices, which skew higher because newer/larger homes are more likely to transact. Both move in the same direction; absolute levels differ.
Two locked-in dynamics. (1) Inventory is historically tight — most existing homeowners hold sub-4% mortgages and won't sell to take 7%. (2) Buyer demand exceeds supply even at high rates because of demographic demand from millennials reaching peak homebuying age. The result: low transaction volume + stable prices.
Most economists think no. The 2008 crash had three drivers we don\'t have today: massive subprime/no-doc lending, severe overbuilding, and a wave of foreclosures. Today\'s lending standards are strict, supply is constrained, and foreclosure rates remain near historic lows.
Zillow market reports, Redfin data center, and your local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) all publish neighborhood-level data. The national median is best used as background context for whatever your local realtor or appraiser tells you.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · MSPUS and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.