Cotality: Home Price Growth Expected to Remain Constrained Through End of 2026

Certain regions continue to show strong home price growth, while others continue to struggle.

• Home prices continue to rise nationally, up 1.7%, but momentum is moderating with a 0.3% monthly decline, and annual growth forecasted to slow to 0.9%
• Compared with August, appreciation strengthened in about half of metros and weakened in the other half, suggesting no single national trajectory.
• Annual appreciation was led by northeastern and Great Lakes states, paced by Illinois (6.9%), Rhode Island (6.4%), Connecticut (6.0%), New Jersey (5.1%), and Ohio (4.9%).

 Cotality, a leader in property information, analytics, and data-enabled solutions, today released its Home Price Index™ with September 2026 data. National single-family home price growth continues to rise nationally in September 2026, rising 1.7% year-over-year but falling 0.3% from August, with the national median above $400,000.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261103333318/en/

National home price growth reaccelerated modestly in September 2026, rising 1.7% year-over-year. Source: Cotality, 2026

Cotality continues to see regional divides in growth: Chronic inventory shortages in the Great Lakes and New England fueled strong annual gains—Illinois (6.9%), Rhode Island (6.4%), Connecticut (6.0%), New Jersey (5.1%), and Ohio (4.9%). Meanwhile, prices fell in several resource-dependent and former boom states: Washington (-1.0%), Wyoming (-0.7%), Texas (-0.4%), Hawaii (-0.1%), and Utah (-0.0%).

“Elevated mortgage rates are expected to limit home buying opportunities in 2027,” concluded Dr. Hepp. “However, more inventory and greater buyer bargaining power will keep home price growth subdued, improving affordability. Market activity will favor regions with solid economic prospects, regions that attract retiring population and offer affordable homes.”

The top metro areas with recent acceleration in home prices include Cleveland, Albany, NY Providence, RI-MA, Greensboro, NC and St Louis, MO-IL. The metro characteristics that generally suggest improving home prices include relatively affordability, job growth and in-migration, and recent price reset that ensure better alignment between local wages and home prices. In contrast, fastest cooling metro have generally seen job losses, build-up in inventories, and are notably less affordable, such as Augusta, GA, Austin, TX, Seattle, San Jose, and Washington DC.

“Elevated mortgage rates are expected to limit home buying opportunities in 2027,” concluded Dr. Hepp. “However, more inventory and greater buyer bargaining power will keep home price growth subdued, improving affordability. Market activity will favor regions with solid economic prospects, regions that attract retiring population and offer affordable homes.”

Top Takeaways:

• U.S. single-family home prices increased by 1.7% year over year in September 2026 compared with September 2025. On a month-over-month basis, home prices declined by -0.3% from August 2026.
• Cotality’s forecast shows annual U.S. home price gains increasing by 0.9% year-over-year in September 2027.
• Among states, Illinois (6.9%) and Rhode Island (6.4%) saw the most annual growth in August.  They were followed by Connecticut (6.0%), New Jersey (5.2%), and Ohio (4.9%).
• 13 states posted reached new price growth highs in August, while six saw negative home price growth: Washington (-1.0%), Wyoming (-0.7%), and Texas (-0.4%).
• The top markets at risk for price declines in the next 12 months, according to Cotality’s Market Risk Indicators include: Buffalo-Cheektowaga, NY; Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA; Providence-Warwick, RI-MA; Tacoma-Lakewood, WA; and Worcester, MA.

The next Cotality Home Price Index will be released on December 1, 2026, featuring data for October 2026. For ongoing housing trends and data, visit the Cotality Insights blog: www.cotality.com/insights.

Methodology

The Cotality HPI^™ is built on industry-leading public record, servicing, and securities real-estate databases and incorporates more than 50 years of repeat-sales transactions for analyzing home price trends. Generally released on the first Tuesday of each month with an average five-week lag, the Cotality HPI is designed to provide an early indication of home price trends by market segment and for the Single-Family Combined tier, representing the most comprehensive set of properties, including all sales for single-family attached and single-family detached properties. The indices are fully revised with each release and employ techniques to signal turning points sooner. The Cotality HPI provides measures for multiple market segments, referred to as tiers, based on property type, price, time between sales, loan type (conforming vs. non-conforming) and distressed sales. Broad national coverage is available from the national level down to ZIP Code, including non-disclosure states.

Cotality HPI Forecasts^™ are based on a two-stage, error-correction econometric model that combines the equilibrium home price—as a function of real disposable income per capita and housing supply constraints—with short-run fluctuations caused by market momentum, mean-reversion, and exogenous economic shocks like changes in the unemployment rate. With a 30-year forecast horizon, Cotality HPI Forecasts project Cotality HPI levels for two tiers — Single-Family Combined (both attached and detached) and Single-Family Combined Excluding Distressed Sales. As a companion to the Cotality HPI Forecasts, Stress-Testing Scenarios align with Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) national scenarios to project five years of home prices under baseline, and severely adverse scenarios at state, metropolitan areas and ZIP Code levels.

About Market Risk Indicators    

Market Risk Indicators are a subscription-based analytics solution that provide monthly updates on the overall health of housing markets across the country. Cotality data scientists combine world-class analytics with detailed economic and housing data to help determine the likelihood of a housing bubble burst in 400+ major metros and all 50 states. Market Risk Indicators is a multi-phase regression model that provides a probability score (from 1 to 100) on the likelihood of two scenarios per metro: a >10% price reduction and a ≤ 10% price reduction. The higher the score, the higher the risk of a price reduction.

About the Market Condition Indicators    

As part of the Cotality HPI and HPI Forecasts offerings, Market Condition Indicators are available at the state, metropolitan area and county levels, identifying individual markets as overvalued, at value or undervalued. These indicators are derived from the long-term fundamental values, which are a function of real disposable income per capita and housing supply constraints. Markets are labeled as overvalued if the current home price indexes exceed their long-term values by greater than 10% and undervalued where the long-term values exceed the index levels by greater than 10%.

Source: Cotality

The data provided are for use only by the primary recipient or the primary recipient's publication or broadcast. This data should not be resold, republished or licensed to any other source, including publications and sources owned by the primary recipient's parent company without prior written permission from Cotality. Any Cotality data used for publication or broadcast, in whole or in part, must be sourced as coming from Cotality, a data and analytics company. For use with broadcast or web content, the citation must directly accompany first reference of the data. If the data are illustrated with maps, charts, graphs, or other visual elements, the Cotality logo must be included on screen or website. For questions, analysis or interpretation of the data, contact Charity Head at newsmedia@Cotality.com.  Data provided should not be modified without the prior written permission of Cotality. Do not use the data in any unlawful manner. The data are compiled from public records, contributory databases and proprietary analytics, and its accuracy is dependent upon these sources.

About Cotality    

Cotality accelerates data, insights, and workflows across the property ecosystem to enable industry professionals to surpass their ambitions and impact society. With billions of real-time data signals across the life cycle of a property, we unearth hidden risks and transformative opportunities for agents, lenders, carriers, and innovators. Get to know us at www.cotality.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261103333318/en/

"More inventory and greater buyer bargaining power will keep home price growth subdued, improving affordability.” -Dr. Selma Hepp, Cotality Chief Economist