June 2026 · Market · 4 min read · by Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®
Prices are high, barely moving, and stretched well past incomes. Four figures explain the standoff the market is in right now.
If you only looked at one statistic a month, you would conclude nothing is happening in housing. Look at four, and the picture sharpens into a standoff.
The median U.S. home is worth about $440K. That number hides enormous range — from sub-$100K counties in the Plains to multi-million-dollar coastal metros — but as a national anchor it tells you the baseline a buyer is negotiating against.
Over the last twelve months, values are essentially flat. After the frantic 2020–2022 run and the 2023–2024 rate shock, the market has settled into a low-volume truce: sellers won’t cut, buyers won’t stretch, and prices drift sideways.
Zoom out and the pandemic repricing is still fully intact. The typical home is up more than a quarter since 2021, and almost none of that has been given back. Flat-for-a-year sits on top of up-a-lot-for-five.
Comparing today’s price-to-income ratios to each market’s own pre-pandemic norm, the country sits roughly 18% above where incomes alone would put it. That gap is the tension in the system — it resolves either through rising incomes or softer prices, and which one wins varies sharply by region. Open the map, switch to “Over / Undervalued,” and watch it diverge.
The bottom line: prices are flat for the year, yet still up about 26% over five years and ~18% above what incomes alone justify. The pandemic repricing hasn’t reversed — it’s paused.
Kinan Sawar, MD — REALTOR® at Shorewest, REALTORS®, serving Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine, Kenosha, and Walworth counties). Email: [email protected] · Phone: (618) 713-2964.
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Home values and rents are Zillow ZHVI/ZORI estimates for the named area, as of 2026-07-03; incomes and population are U.S. Census (SAIPE, Population Estimates); migration is IRS Statistics of Income. Area-level statistical estimates for information only — not an appraisal, and not financial, legal, or tax advice.