US House Prices Rose 0.3% in July, With Annual Gains Ranging From 0.6% to 6.3% by Region

US house prices rose 0.3% in July and 2.6% over the year, but annual gains ran from 0.6% in the Mountain division to 6.3% in the Middle Atlantic.

House prices in the United States rose 0.3% in July from the previous month and 2.6% from July 2025, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported on 29 September 2026. The monthly figure is seasonally adjusted, and the agency left June's previously reported 0.0% price movement unchanged.

The national average conceals a wide regional split

The agency publishes the same index for nine census divisions, and that is where a modest national number becomes a story. Monthly changes ran from -0.8% in the Mountain division to +1.5% in the Middle Atlantic. Over twelve months the range was wider: from +0.6% in the Mountain division to +6.3% in the Middle Atlantic.

The same two divisions sit at both ends of both rankings. That consistency is what makes the reading worth acting on. A single month's gap between two regions can be noise; a division that is weakest on the monthly measure and weakest on the annual measure as well is describing a direction that has held for a year. The Mountain division is the interior west: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The Middle Atlantic is New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A buyer comparing those two sets of markets in July was looking at two housing cycles running inside one country.

A flat June that stayed flat

Revisions are the quiet risk in monthly house price data, because each month's figure is built from transactions that keep arriving after publication. This release states that the previously reported 0.0% price movement in June remained unchanged. A flat month that survives revision is a firmer reading than a month that moves, and it means the 0.3% July gain is measured from a base the agency is no longer adjusting.

Why 2.6% is not the only annual rate you will see

Several credible house price measures exist for the United States, and they routinely print different annual rates for the same month. Each is built on a different sample: some cover every recorded sale, some only sales financed in a particular way, some weight repeat sales of the same property, and some are computed indices rather than transaction counts. The differences are methodological, not evidence that one is wrong.

The practical consequence for anyone comparing two sources is to compare direction and turning points rather than decimals. Two indices that both show low single-digit annual growth and both show the interior west trailing the northeast are telling the same story, whatever the second decimal says.

Where our own figures sit

Our current United States row carries a national asking price of 2,411 US dollars per square metre for August 2026, and a per-unit pair from a single provider's August 2026 report: a typical home value of 369,678 US dollars against a typical asking rent of 1,948 US dollars a month, which gives a gross yield of 6.32%. Annual price growth on the row is 2.2%, our bubble score is 57 on a scale where 60 begins the elevated band, and the effective tax on rental income for a non-resident owner who elects net-basis treatment is 10.66%. Round-trip transaction costs are 6.9%.

The 2.6% the agency printed today and the 2.2% on our row are not in conflict. They are different indices on different transaction samples, and neither can be substituted for the other. One further caveat belongs with our figures: the per-square-metre level comes from a different publisher and a different sample than the per-unit price and rent that produce the yield, and it is an asking price rather than a transacted one. Dividing one into the other would imply an average dwelling size that nobody has measured, so we do not.

Sources: Federal Housing Finance Agency, FHFA House Price Index Up 0.3 Percent in July Up 2.6 Percent from Last Year, 29 September 2026 https://www.fhfa.gov/news/news-release/fhfa-house-price-index-up-0.3-percent-in-july-up-2.6-percent-from-last-year; Federal Housing Finance Agency, US House Price Index September 2026 report, reference month July 2026 https://www.fhfa.gov/reports/house-price-index/2026/9

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