With more businesses reopening and some pandemic measures loosening, homebuyers began the return to cities and brought rising home prices with them.
The median urban home sale price jumped 15.9% annually for the four weeks ending Feb. 21 compared to 15.5% for the suburbs and 14.3% in rural areas, according to a report from Redfin. It represents the first time cities led home price growth by market type since March 2020 when the country entered pandemic lockdown and buyers fled in search of more
"For all the talk of an urban exodus, the housing market in cities is as hot as we've ever seen it, especially for single-family homes," Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said in the report. "There are plenty of buyers out there with deep pockets who are coming out ahead financially during the pandemic. They want a house with lots of space while they are still working from home, but they also want to live in a
Relatively affordable metro areas experienced the widest annual growth in median sales prices. Baltimore shot up 37.8% year-over-year, narrowly edging out Detroit’s 37.7% and Cleveland’s 33.4%. San Francisco had the lowest urban growth rate of -1.4%, followed by New York’s 2.2% and Washington, D.C.’s 5.5%.
Overall, urban home sales saw a 4.7% annual rise while suburban and rural sales both increased 3.6%.
With inventory so low, listings are selling closer to their asking prices than ever before, according to a separate Redfin report. The average sale-to-list price ratio hit a monthly all-time high of 99.6% in the four weeks ending Feb. 28, rising from 98% from the year earlier. When broken down to just the last week of February after
