US Home Price Growth Slowed to 1.4% in July, With 19 Big Metros Losing Momentum

Cotality put annual US home price growth at 1.4% in July 2026 and counted 19 of the 100 largest metros with negative three-month momentum, up from 10 in June.

US home prices in July 2026 stood 1.4% above their level a year earlier, and month to month they barely moved at all. Analytics firm Cotality, which published the reading on 8 September 2026, noted that a June-to-July gain of roughly 0.4% was the pre-pandemic norm. This July produced nothing of the sort.

Nineteen of the hundred largest metros are now sliding

The share of large markets losing ground almost doubled in a single month. Cotality counted 19 of the 100 biggest US metropolitan areas with negative three-month price momentum in July, against 10 in June. The state map is unusually split: Connecticut and Illinois both posted 6.8% annual growth, Indiana 5.3%, New Jersey 5.0% and Nebraska 4.9%, while Texas fell 0.8%, Colorado 0.7%, Washington 0.4% and Hawaii 0.2%. At metro level the spread runs from Abilene, Texas at 13.3% and Helena, Montana at 10.4% down to Dalton, Georgia at -7.6% and Kahului-Wailuku, Hawaii at -7.2%. Napa, California sits at -4.3%.

Selma Hepp, Cotality's chief economist, framed the slowdown as partial relief rather than a warning: "While prospective buyers may feel squeezed by volatile mortgage rates, slower home price appreciation should gradually help ease affordability pressures—especially if wage growth remains consistently stronger."

The national figure depends on which index you open

A fortnight before the Cotality release, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that US house prices rose 2.1% between the second quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026, and 0.3% quarter on quarter, with its seasonally adjusted monthly index flat in June. Those are not competing claims about the same thing. The FHFA series tracks purchases financed with conforming mortgages bought or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so cash sales and jumbo lending fall outside it, and its latest reference period is earlier than Cotality's July. Anyone comparing the two headlines will find a gap of most of a percentage point that is entirely methodological.

What the United States looks like in our own snapshot

Glopra's United States row, dated 4 September 2026, carries an average asking price of $2,433 per square metre, taken from Realtor.com's median list price per square foot for July 2026. Gross rental yield stands at 6.71%, among the higher readings in our developed-market set, and the stored 12-month price change is 2.2% — the FHFA monthly series for May 2026, an earlier month and a different index from the figure above, which is why the two sit apart rather than contradict each other. Our Bubble Risk score for the country is 57 out of 100, in the moderate band. Round-trip transaction costs run near 6.9%.

What would settle the direction

The metro count is the number to watch, not the national average. If the 19 markets with negative momentum become 30 or 40 in the autumn readings, the flat national line stops being an average of rising and falling places and starts being a decline in its own right. If mortgage rates ease and the count stabilises, July 2026 will read as a pause inside a slow-growth year. A single month at 1.4% does not distinguish between the two.

Sources: Cotality, US Home Price Insights September 2026, 8 Sep 2026 https://www.cotality.com/insights/articles/us-home-price-insights-september-2026; FHFA House Price Index Q2 2026 news release, 25 Aug 2026 https://www.fhfa.gov/news/news-release/u.s.-house-prices-rise-2.1-percent-year-over-year-up-0.3-percent-quarter-over-quarter

Market data: United States · Miami