NEW YORK, NY — Home prices are cooling across much of the country, but the pace is uneven, and some metros are seeing much steeper pullbacks than others. Realtor.com says August brought another month of year-over-year declines in price per square foot, a measure that adjusts for home size and is often used to compare markets more cleanly.
Nationwide, price per square foot fell 1.8% from a year earlier, marking the 10th straight month of annual declines. Median list prices also slipped in three of the four major regions. Sellers appear to be pricing more realistically as higher mortgage rates and shifting supply and demand reshape the market heading into late summer.
Austin, Tampa and Memphis posted the sharpest annual drops in asking prices
Among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, saw the biggest annual drop in list price per square foot in August at 8.1%. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida, followed with a 5.6% decline, and Memphis, Tennessee-Mississippi-Arkansas, fell 4.1%.
Those were not the only markets under pressure. San Francisco, San Antonio, Denver, Baltimore, San Diego, Orlando and Portland also recorded declines, with Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon-Washington, down 2.4%. Realtor.com said the median list price per square foot fell in 36 of the top 50 metros, showing that the cooling trend reached well beyond a few isolated hotspots…