US Home Value Outlook: August 2026

The typical US metro home value sits at $284,806 (median, July 2026 data), with 565 of 703 tracked metros showing year-over-year appreciation of +2.3% ▲ on average. That’s the rear-view — this post is about what comes next.

How we grade ourselves

This is the first scored edition of this outlook. Every month from here we publish last month’s projections next to the actual home value figures — hits and misses alike — so the track record builds in public.

What our models predict

Across 703 metros, our 6-month home-value forecasts are broadly lower at −0.1% ▼ on average — 330 metros forecast to appreciate ▲ and 373 expected to decline ▼. Twelve months out, the national picture is +1.4% ▲. But the story varies dramatically by metro. The national headline hides metros where buyers are quietly re-entering the market and others where price cuts are still working through inventory.

We publish the national home-value outlook here and grade it monthly. Per-metro home-value projections live in the app at six- and twelve-month horizons, where the signal is meaningful — one-month moves in home values are too small and too noisy to rank metros by, so we don’t.

What’s driving the forecasts

Mortgage rates remain the dominant signal. With 30-year rates holding above 6%, our model continues to favor metros where the rent-to-value ratio is wide — markets where rental income has caught up to flat or only mildly appreciating prices. Those are the cities where investor demand, combined with limited new for-sale supply, supports modest continued appreciation.

Migration matters too. Metros that have absorbed net in-migration for two consecutive years are turning up across our forecast leaderboard, particularly when paired with employment growth exceeding the national pace. Several Mountain West and Carolinas markets fit that profile.

On the cooling side, the story is mostly oversupply combined with affordability stretch. Sun Belt metros that pulled the most single-family permits during 2021–2022 are still working through new inventory, and our proprietary ML models are projecting modest price declines as that supply lands. A handful of these markets also face rising insurance costs, which our models pick up indirectly through disaster-frequency features.

Explore the full interactive forecast for your metro at rentlens.co →

Our home-value models run at 98.4% forecast accuracy across 703 metros. Forecasts retrain monthly as new actuals come in, and every edition is graded against the last.