When it comes to savings accounts, the most valuable in the world is the U.S. housing market, storing the combined wealth of presidents and plumbers, scientists and security officers, supply chain managers, engineers and investors from around the world.
As of June 2025, the combined value of the U.S. housing market exceeded $55 trillion, with $20 trillion in wealth accruing just since 2020. One-third of that value is concentrated in nine metro areas, with individual valuations exceeding $1 trillion.
Shifting market dynamics since the COVID-19 pandemic have altered where future gains — and losses — in housing wealth may emerge, according to recent research published by Zillow. In the past year, for example, 9 of the 10 largest housing markets have a combined net loss in home values, as a “chronic affordability crisis” puts downward pressure on home prices.
Smaller markets have thus far played an outsized role in the $862 billion of housing wealth gained since June 2024, helping to establish what Realtor.com describes as a “rare state of balance” in the summer housing market. Though local conditions vary significantly across regions and metros, some markets have begun to favor homebuyers instead of home sellers due to increased inventory levels and softening prices.
A five-month supply of homes nationally has not been available during summer months since Realtor.com began tracking the metric in 2016. “Months of supply” is commonly used to represent how long it would take to sell all currently listed homes at a given sales pace. Fewer than four months generally signals a seller’s market, more than six months favors buyers, and somewhere between the two reflects a measure of market balance.
New construction has played a crucial role in contributing to available inventory and overall gains in housing wealth for markets around the U.S. Zillow reports that newly constructed homes added $2.5 trillion in national housing value since early 2020 — about 12.5% of total gains over that period — with the largest share of new construction value gains in Utah (23%), Texas (22%), Idaho (22%) and Florida (20%).
Cooling home price gains and sluggish sales were a defining feature of the summer housing market, helping for-sale inventory pile up. In June alone, 26.6% of for-sale listings cut their prices, the highest level for June since 2018, according to Zillow data. So-called “pandemic boomtowns” like Raleigh, N.C., Nashville, Tenn., and Phoenix observed the largest cuts.
Declining prices in those cities reflect a larger trend across the Sun Belt. Years of massive home price gains and rising insurance costs have rounded out the affordability edge that Southern markets once enjoyed. After the past year, home price gains have grown more concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest.
After New York, which gained $216 billion in housing wealth during the 12 months ending in June, the states that accrued the most home value according to Zillow were New Jersey ($101 billion), Illinois ($89 billion), Pennsylvania ($73 billion), Ohio ($49 billion) and Michigan ($48 billion).
Pandemic leaders like California, Texas and Florida lost housing wealth in the last year, shedding $106 billion, $109 billion and $32 billion, respectively. Since early 2020, the state housing markets with the largest total value gains are California ($3.4 trillion), Florida ($1.6 trillion), New York ($1.5 trillion) and Texas ($1.2 trillion).
Though active listings rose 20.9% annually on a national level in August, active listing growth has decelerated since May and the gap to pre-pandemic levels has begun to widen once more. Active listings nationally sit 14.3% below 2017 to 2019 levels, up from 12.9% in June, according to Realtor.com.
Price dips have kept home investors active as affordability challenges reduce competition from owner-occupied buyers. In the second quarter of 2025, 3 in 10 home sales went to an investor buyer, according to real estate market analytics firm Cotality.
Any marked improvement in mortgages rates, though, could spark a surge of competition from owner-occupied buyers, renewing upward pressure on prices. Cotality’s U.S. Home Price Insights report for September projects the national home price growth rate of 1.4% from July 2024 to July 2025 to more than double to 3.9% from July 2025 to July 2026.
For now, Realtor.com data suggest that 7 of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas are firmly buyer’s markets, with four in Florida: Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville and Tampa. The other two are New York City and Riverside, Calif.
