- Year-over-year price growth continues its downward trend, only rising 1.1% in October 2025.
- Price declines expanded from six of the 100 largest metros in January to 32 by October, marking the broadest softening of prices since the early 2010s.
- Metropolitan areas that saw the largest slowdown in home price growth over the past year include Miami and St. Petersburg, FL; Rochester, NY; Las Vegas, NV; Seattle ,WA; and Dallas, TX — all down six percentage points or more.
Cotality™, a leader in property information, analytics, and data-enabled solutions, released its Home Price Index™ for October 2025 data today.
Home prices grew 1.1% in October, continuing an ongoing downward trend in price increases. While the deceleration stands in contrast to the strong trajectory recorded at the beginning of the year, this deceleration reflects a much-needed rebalancing after years of unsustainable gains.
Despite only modest price increases, affordability constraints continue to push homeownership out of reach for many. Cotality experts found that this economic pressure has led to a 15% slowdown in out-of-state migration over the last five years, as high costs and uncertainty encourage people to stay put.
However, some areas of the country remain accessible to buyers.
Where is buying a house affordable1?
- Johnstown, PA
- Elmira, NY
- Joplin, MO
- Decatur, IL
- Weirton, WV
Regional differences remain pronounced, with demand favoring areas that offer both economic opportunity and relative affordability. Still, the trend toward softening prices is clear. Not since the early 2010s have prices softened so widely. Price declines expanded from six of the 100 largest metros in January to 32 by October.
This deceleration highlights the impact of higher mortgage rates earlier in the year and persistent affordability challenges. Furthermore, price growth was dampened by a notable increase in inventory. Many markets saw a surge in both existing and newly built homes, driven by a slowing rate of in-migration and weakened demand.
“Slowing price growth reflects a much-needed rebalancing after years of unsustainable gains. While some markets are experiencing declines, these adjustments will help restore affordability over time and make housing more accessible to a wider group of buyers,” said Cotality’s Chief Economist Dr. Selma Hepp.
The next Cotality Home Price Index will be released on January 6, 2026, featuring data for November 2025. For ongoing housing trends and data, visit the Cotality Insights blog: www.cotality.com/insights.
1: The most and least affordable U.S. cities were adjusted this month to reflect updated Listing Trends data.
Methodology
The Cotality HPI™ is built on industry-leading public record, servicing and securities real-estate databases and incorporates more than 45 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—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, adverse and severely adverse scenarios at state, metropolitan areas and ZIP Code levels. The forecast accuracy represents a 95% statistical confidence interval with a +/- 2% margin of error for the index.
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