Zillow economists just published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home prices—as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index—will shift -0.1% between April 2026 and April 2027.

That’s a small downward revision from its 12-month national forecast published in April (+0.1%) and its 12-month national forecast published in March (+0.5%).

Nationally aggregated home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, are currently up +0.7% year-over-year (historically speaking, that’s a soft environment). Zillow’s latest 12-month outlook (-0.1%) expects national home prices to remain near that subdued pace. As long as national home price growth remains below U.S. wage growth (currently up +3.6%), underlying fundamentals should continue to improve as the Pandemic Housing Boom’s housing demand pull ahead and overheating gets smoothed out. If that trend continues—and mortgage rates don’t spike—national housing affordability in the purchase market should also continue to gradually improve.

Zillow’s forecast calls for a soft nationally aggregated housing market over the next 12 months, one where national housing affordability may improve slightly as U.S. income growth outpaces U.S. home price growth.

What type of regional variation does Zillow anticipate over the next 12 months?

Click here for an interactive version of Zillow’s forecast

Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow forecast the biggest home price increase between April 2026 and April 2027 to occur in these 15 metros:

Among the 300 largest U.S. metro area housing markets, Zillow forecast the biggest home price decline between April 2026 and April 2027 to occur in these 15 metros:

My quick take: Based on my own analysis, I believe Zillow is too bearish on the New Orleans metro area housing market—which is showing signs of mild tightening after passing through a correction—and also too bearish on pockets of the Bay Area—especially San Francisco proper—which has benefited from AI boom spillover (although pockets of Oakland remain soft).

Below is what the current year-over-year rate of home price change looks like for single-family and condo home prices. The Sun Belt, in particular Southwest Florida, is currently the epicenter of housing market softness over the past year.

Click here for an interactive version of the map below

Over the past week, ResiClub PRO members got these 3 additional housing research pieces:

One major demand shock is absent from this housing market cycle

Comparing and contrasting the 2008 cycle with the current housing cycle—see our 23-chart slideshow

Big homebuilders are maintaining aggressive incentives—but the escalation has plateaued in recent months

CoStar Group announced Friday that it has agreed to acquire Zonda, one of the most influential data and analytics firms serving the U.S. and Canada homebuilding industry, for $800 million.

The deal expands CoStar's reach deeper into residential real estate and gives the company ownership of a platform used by thousands of homebuilders, land developers, lenders, building-product manufacturers, and housing investors across North America. It also brings NewHomeSource.com—the largest new-home listings marketplace in the U.S.—into CoStar's growing portfolio of real estate marketplaces, which includes Homes.com.

The acquisition continues CoStar's long-running strategy of expanding through acquisitions and building category-leading information and marketplace businesses. Over the past two decades, CoStar has acquired and integrated major real estate brands including LoopNet, Apartments.com, Homes.com, STR, Matterport, and Australia's Domain.

For CoStar founder and CEO Andy Florance, the Zonda acquisition fills an important gap. While CoStar has become a dominant force in commercial real estate data and has rapidly expanded its residential marketplace presence through Homes.com, Zonda gives the company a commanding position in the new-home construction ecosystem—a segment where CoStar historically had less direct exposure.

To understand why this acquisition matters, it's worth understanding how Zonda itself was built.

The roots of Zonda trace back to Hanley Wood, a company founded in 1976 by Michael Hanley and Michael Wood. For decades, Hanley Wood was the dominant media and information company serving the residential construction industry. Its portfolio included industry publications such as Builder Magazine, Multifamily Executive, Architect, Journal of Light Construction, and numerous conferences.

Hanley Wood's evolution accelerated in 2013 when it acquired Metrostudy, one of the most respected sources of new-home construction data. The acquisition transformed Hanley Wood from primarily a media company into a hybrid media-and-data platform.

Meanwhile, on a parallel track, Jeff Meyers (the current CEO of Zonda) was building Meyers Research.

Founded in 2006, Meyers Research focused on providing market intelligence, consulting, and data products to homebuilders, land developers, and institutional investors. Rather than building media brands, Meyers Research concentrated on helping executives make land acquisition, development, and investment decisions using local-market housing data and advisory services. Over time, the company developed what became known as the Zonda platform, a technology-driven housing intelligence system used throughout the homebuilding industry.

The two firms (Hanley Wood and Meyers Research) merged together in 2018 when private-equity firm MidOcean Partners acquired Hanley Wood and merged it with Meyers Research. The combination united Hanley Wood's media brands, Metrostudy data assets, and industry reach with Meyers Research's consulting business, executive relationships, and technology platform.

In October 2020, the combined company officially rebranded as Zonda, retiring the Hanley Wood and Meyers Research names as its primary corporate identity.

Today's Zonda looks very different than either Hanley Wood or Meyers Research did independently.

Zonda provides homebuilding data, consulting, forecasting, workflow software, digital marketing tools, and online marketplaces. Through acquisitions over the past several years, Zonda also expanded into satellite imagery, Canadian housing analytics, and consumer-facing new-home marketplaces. Most notably, its 2024 acquisition of BDX and NewHomeSource.com significantly expanded its marketplace footprint.

That combination of proprietary data, software, advisory services, and marketplaces is likely what attracted CoStar.

For CoStar, the deal represents another step toward becoming a comprehensive information and marketplace platform across virtually every corner of real estate—from commercial properties and apartments to resale homes and now new-home construction.

CoStar has spent the better part of a decade methodically acquiring its way into every major corner of real estate data and marketplaces—commercial, multifamily, residential resale, hospitality, and now new construction. The Zonda deal fills the last significant gap in that strategy. For CoStar, the prize isn't just Zonda's marketplaces; it's also the proprietary lot-level dataset and the deeply embedded workflow software that builders rely on daily to make land, capital, and sales decisions. That kind of data is extraordinarily hard to replicate, and it gives CoStar a foot in the door at virtually every large homebuilder in North America.

But for the commercial real estate and homebuilding sectors at large, it means their data world is getting more concentrated.