Metro Detroit is back near the top for accelerating home prices

Metro Detroit is again near the top in the nation for home price appreciation. 

The monthly S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices released this week shows that home prices in metro Detroit in the month of April were up 5.5% from a year earlier, far outpacing the country as a whole (2.7%) and trailing just the New York City (7.9%) and Chicago (6%) metro areas, per the report.

Detroit’s return to the near-top of price appreciation — the region briefly led the country around the end of 2023 — comes as a handful of once-red-hot markets in the South are experiencing price depreciation, particularly Dallas and Tampa. In short, the Midwest and Northeast are now dominant. 

“Regional performance revealed a dramatic shift from pandemic-era patterns,” Nicholas Godec, head of fixed income tradables & commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement accompanying the Case-Shiller report, noting that other once-hot areas such as Phoenix and Miami have also cooled.

“This geographic rotation reflects the fundamental economics now driving the market,” Godec added. “Affordability constraints have hit previously overheated markets hardest, while traditionally stable markets with more reasonable price levels are attracting renewed interest.”

A separate report released this month by real estate marketplace Homes.com for the month of May also shows home price appreciation around the region of around 5.5% year over year, with a median sale price of $290,000. Nationwide, home prices grew just 1% in May from a year earlier, per the Homes.com report.

While areas such as metro Detroit are often viewed as more stable than some coastal and southern peers, some of the larger national trends are also playing out locally. Most notably, a big boost in inventory of homes on the market, although not so big that it’s dragging down prices.  

“We’re witnessing a housing market in transition,” Godec with S&P Dow Jones said in the statement. “The era of broad-based, rapid price appreciation appears over, replaced by a more selective environment where local fundamentals matter more than national trends. For investors and policymakers alike, this shift toward geographic divergence and moderate growth may actually represent a healthier, more sustainable trajectory than the unsustainable boom we experienced just a few years ago.”