Cape Coral, Florida, was one of the hottest housing markets in the country three years ago. Buyers from the Northeast and Midwest competed for ranch homes along canal-lined streets, pushing prices up more than 50 percent between 2020 and early 2023. By the first quarter of 2026, that same metro had posted its eighth consecutive quarterly price decline, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s House Price Index.
Cape Coral is not an outlier. It is the sharpest example of a correction now running through much of the state. During the first quarter of 2026, home prices fell in 39 of the 129 largest U.S. metropolitan areas tracked by the FHFA’s quarterly index, and seven of the ten steepest declines were in Florida. The affected metros span the Gulf Coast and Central Florida, including Cape Coral-Fort Myers, North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Lakeland, Deltona-Daytona Beach, Palm Bay-Melbourne, and Ocala. Together, they represent a striking geographic concentration that sets Florida apart from the scattered softness appearing in other Sun Belt states.
Where Florida prices are sliding
The FHFA’s repeat-sales index, which tracks price changes on properties financed through federally backed mortgages, is considered one of the most reliable directional gauges in housing economics because it measures the same homes over time rather than relying on shifting sales mixes. By that measure, the Cape Coral-Fort Myers metro peaked in early 2023 and has declined in every quarter since. North Port-Sarasota and Tampa followed similar arcs, plateauing in mid-2023 before turning negative.
The declines vary in severity. Cape Coral-Fort Myers and North Port-Sarasota have recorded the steepest pullbacks among the Florida metros on the list, while Tampa and Lakeland have experienced more modest retreats. But the direction is consistent: prices across these markets are moving lower, quarter after quarter, in a pattern that has now persisted for roughly two years…