Did U.S. home prices just jump higher?

Can ‘pop in housing demand’ last?

See More Deseret News Stories In SearchView CommentsShareA for-sale sign stands in front of a home in West Jordan on Tuesday, May 12, 2026. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News By Lisa Riley RocheLisa has been a Deseret News reporter for more than 30 years, covering Utah's Olympics and politics.Your browser does not support the audio element.Play audioNEW: Try Article AudioNEW: Try Article AudioAudio quality:|Skip back 15 secondsPlay audioSkip forward 15 seconds00:0000:00Decrease playback rate1.0xIncrease playback rate00:00/00:00Skip back 15 secondsPlay audioSkip forward 15 seconds-+

Home prices are getting higher, heading up the most last month in more than a year.

The median sales price for a house in the U.S. reached $396,173 in April, a 1.6% increase from the previous month but 2.4% higher than April 2025, according to a new analysis by the online brokerage Redfin.

That’s the biggest year-over-over price hike since March 2025, when the cost went up 2.5%.

The reason, Redfin says, is that buyers are starting to come off the sidelines. Economic uncertainty, stemming from President Donald Trump’s tariff policies that have been struck down by the courts, has caused many Americans to postpone big purchases.

Now, economic indicators, including unexpectedly strong hiring in April, are seen as lessening recession fears and “likely helped fuel a pop in housing demand,” a Redfin post explained, pointing out that last month, pending home sales reached the highest level since February 2023.

The analysis looked at April data from the 50 most populated metropolitan areas of the country, a list that does not include any place in Utah. Redfin lists the median sales price for a home in the Salt Lake City area as $586,250 for March, up 13% from the same month last year.

There’s a wide range of increases in median sales prices in April among the 50 metropolitan areas analyzed, from a 10.7% year-over-year boost in San Francisco to more than $1.7 million, to a 3.8% drop in Dallas, down to just under $409,000.

Even though that adds up to the biggest jump in prices in 13 months, the increase is still far below the just over 24% year-over-year growth measured in May 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic homebuying frenzy.

Is the housing market still sluggish?

Despite the current modest acceleration in growth, the Redfin post expressed some caution.

“It’s worth noting that while the housing market has been heating up, it’s still more sluggish than it was in recent years,” according to the post, with homes still taking “longer to sell than they did a year ago, and sales and listings remain below pre-pandemic levels.”

The real estate website Zillow called the federal government’s April jobs report “Stabilizing, Not Accelerating,” in a recent headline on a post stating that its data “shows a resilient housing market with sales barely matching year-ago levels.”

That’s despite lower mortgage rates than a year ago, Zillow noted. Mortgage rates had dipped below 6% earlier this year, but climbed after the U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran in late February, sending gas and other prices soaring, fueling inflation.

A 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.37% for the week ending May 7, up from 6.3% for the prior week, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation known as Freddie Mac. A year ago, that rate averaged 6.76%.

“Housing costs may have eased, but the cost of everything else is on the rise,” the Zillow post said, adding that homebuyers “need confidence in job security, income growth, and their broader financial position.”