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15 housing markets with the biggest home price declines since the Pandemic Housing Boom ended
During the Pandemic Housing Boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus, and the remote work boom. Federal Reserve researchers estimate “new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand.” Unlike housing demand, housing stock isn’t as elastic and can't quickly ramp up. As a result, the heightened demand drained the market of active inventory and caused home prices to overheat, with U.S. home prices in June 2022 sitting a staggering 43.2% above March 2020 levels. The run-up was even greater in some metro markets, including Naples, FL (+73%); Austin, TX (+73%); Punta Gorda, FL (+71%); Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL (+70%); and North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, FL (+69%).
Not long after mortgage rates spiked in 2022, the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out. Since June 2022, the nationally aggregated housing market has been going through a period of recalibration—with U.S. home prices in March 2026 up just 2.2% above June 2022 levels, while weekly U.S. worker earnings during that same window jumped 14.7%.
However, some markets’ so-called recalibration window has gone further, and they’ve passed through a home price correction.
Among the nation’s 300 largest metro area housing markets, these 15 markets have home prices this spring at least -10.0% below their local 2022 peak, according to ResiClub’s analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index:
Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX → -27.8%
Punta Gorda, FL → -25.4%
Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL → -18.9%
North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL → -17.5%
New Orleans-Metairie, LA → -13.8%
Houma-Thibodaux, LA → -13.2%
Boulder, CO → -11.8%
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ → -11.6%
Naples-Marco Island, FL → -11.5%
Lake Charles, LA → -11.4%
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX → -11.2%
San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA → -11.0%
Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO → -10.6%
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX → -10.1%
Boise, ID → -10.1%
Note: Just because a market is still down from its 2022 peak doesn’t guarantee that home prices are still falling there. At the latest reading, home prices are up year-over-year in metro New Orleans, LA (+2.1%), and pockets of San Francisco, CA, are seeing notable pricing action this spring.
Click here to view an interactive of the map below
Many of the softest housing markets, where home prices are down the most from their 2022 peak, are located in Southern and Mountain West regions. Many of those areas were home to many of the nation’s top pandemic boomtowns, which experienced significant home price growth during the Pandemic Housing Boom, which stretched housing prices beyond local income levels. Once pandemic-fueled domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates spiked, markets like Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin, Texas, faced challenges as they had to rely on local incomes to sustain frothy home prices. The housing market softening in these areas was further accelerated by the abundance of new home supply in the pipeline across the Sun Belt. When and where needed, builders are often willing to reduce prices or make other affordability adjustments to maintain sales. These adjustments in the new construction market also create a cooling effect on the resale market, as some buyers who might have opted for an existing home shift their focus to new homes where deals are available. In contrast, many Northeast and Midwest markets were less reliant on pandemic domestic migration and have less new home construction in progress. With lower exposure to that migration pullback demand shock—and fewer homebuilders doing large incentives—active inventory in these Midwest and Northeast regions has remained relatively tight.
As ResiClub has previously covered, there’s a moderate statistical correlation (R² = 0.30) between Moody's Q2 2022 valuation score and the change in home prices from their 2022 peak through March 2026. If the San Francisco metro—the largest outlier—is excluded, that correlation strengthens (R² = 0.39).
Click here to view an interactive of the scatter plot below
Among the 412 metro areas that Moody’s Analytics tracks, Punta Gorda has seen the biggest drawdown in “overvaluation” since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in Q2 2022. It’s followed by New Orleans, LA; Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL; Austin, TX; and North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, FL.
In theory, as froth recedes and “overvaluation” comes down, so does downside risk. And that dynamic may already be quietly reshaping the risk profile in pockets of the Texas and Florida housing markets, where home prices have fallen and “overvaluation” has declined considerably since Q2 2022.
Build-to-Rent gets a clean exemption as House removes 7-year selloff rule from institutional homebuying ban
The fight over how Congress bans institutional investors from buying single-family homes has taken a big turn.
Late Wednesday night, House Republican leadership posted the text of their amendment to the Senate-passed 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. For the build-to-rent industry and institutional single-family rental landlords, the news is significant: the controversial 7-year selloff requirement has been removed, according to ResiClub’s reading of the bill.
Here's how we got here—and what the House version would actually do.
The backstory
On January 7, President Trump announced he was taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes and called on Congress to codify it. On January 20, he went further with an executive order directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop backing purchases by large institutional investors — while explicitly promising a build-to-rent exemption in whatever ban Congress ultimately passed. By February 19, the White House had reportedly settled on defining "large investors" as entities owning 100 or more homes.
What Congress delivered was somewhat different. On March 2, Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, setting the threshold at 350 homes. The Senate passed it 89–10 in March. But the bill came with a catch that alarmed the housing industry: while build-to-rent was technically exempted (purchases of homes that require major repairs were also exempted), institutional landlords would be required to sell those homes acquired through the exemptions to individual buyers within seven years of purchase. The National Association of Home Builders withdrew support. A bipartisan group of 76 House members signed a letter calling the selloff rule a measure that would "effectively halt the production of Build-to-Rent housing nationwide."
What the House changed
The House amendment, posted Wednesday, keeps the topline ban intact. It would ban large institutional investors from purchasing additional single-family homes. Institutional SFR landlords—defined by the bill as entities that control 350 or more single-family homes—would be allowed to keep the homes they already own.
What's gone is the 7-year selloff. Under the House version, build-to-rent is a clean exemption: institutional investors can build single-family rentals (i.e., Build-to-Rent) or buy newly constructed homes for rental and hold them indefinitely, with no forced disposition clock. Renovate-to-rent is similarly freed from the selloff requirement.
Under the Senate bill, an institutional renovate-to-rent purchase required the investor to spend at least 15% of the purchase price on improvements. The House version drops that numerical floor, instead requiring only that the home fail to meet structural or core system elements of local building codes, or minimum property standards for conventional mortgage financing.
The revised bill also allows institutional investors to continue buying homes from each other (i.e., portfolio sales).
With the 7-year forced selloff removed, NAHB said Thursday that it would back the bill.
What comes next
Reportedly, the House will consider a vote next week.
We'll have to wait and see how the White House and Senate feel about these changes. President Donald Trump publicly endorsed the Senate version as-is on Monday (May 12) via Truth Social; however, Politico also reported that the White House privately signaled it would like to see the 7-year selloff dropped. Whether the Senate—in particular Senator Elizabeth Warren—accepts the elimination of the 7-year selloff, a provision she helped include, remains to be seen.
Over the past week, ResiClub PRO members got these 3 additional housing research articles:
Heading to IMN East in Miami next week?
Come find us at the ResiClub Terminal booth. Meghan Malas, ResiClub's Head of Research, and I will be there—happy to walk you through the ResiClub Terminal or just chat about the housing market. Want to connect? Shoot me a note: [email protected]
