Home prices rose in 78% of counties — but not everywhere
Published September 6, 2026 · An analysis of 3,071 U.S. counties · Zillow home values through July 31, 2026
Looking at a national home-price number can make the housing market seem as if it is moving in one direction. I wanted to know whether that was actually true locally, so I compared the latest typical home value in every county HomePriceMap tracks with the value one year earlier.
The broad answer is yes: prices are still rising in most places. Of 3,071 tracked counties, 2,381 gained value, 685 declined, and five were unchanged. That means 77.5% rose over the year. The median county gained 2.78%.
The more useful answer is that the national result hides a sharp regional split. The typical county in North Dakota gained 6.5%, while the typical county in Kentucky lost 3.1%. Because those figures are state medians, they describe the middle county in each state rather than a single outlier at either extreme.
The U.S. line is the median change across all tracked counties, not a population-weighted national index. Bars use a shared −7% to +7% scale.
The slowdown is broader than a few expensive metros
In Kentucky, 83 of 120 tracked counties declined and the median change was −3.15%. In Florida, 46 of 67 declined, producing a −1.2% state median. More than half of tracked counties also fell in California, Texas, and Arizona, although their state medians stayed much closer to flat.
Colorado is the hinge point. Thirty of 62 counties declined, but its median change was still barely positive at 0.025%. Calling that either growth or decline would overstate what the data says; statewide, it was essentially flat.
The latest county figures do not explain why this group cooled, but they do show that the reversal is distributed across each state rather than confined to a single headline city.
The Midwest and Northeast are still climbing
The other side is unusually consistent. Every one of the 62 tracked counties in New York gained value. So did 82 of 83 in Michigan and 71 of 72 in Wisconsin. Their median county gains were 5.56%, 5.62%, and 5.97%, respectively.
North Dakota had the highest state median at 6.5%, with 37 of 43 tracked counties rising. Illinois followed the same broad pattern: its median county gained 5.35%, and 87 of 102 counties rose.
I would not read this as a forecast that the Midwest must keep outperforming. It is a snapshot of the year ending July 2026. But it does show why “the housing market” is too blunt a phrase: one national number currently combines widespread declines in several Sun Belt and Western states with near-universal gains across parts of the Midwest and Northeast.
How I calculated this
I used Zillow's typical home value for each county and its year-over-year percentage change through July 31, 2026. For each state, I took the median of its tracked county changes. A median gives a useful picture of the typical county without letting one very large metro dominate the result, but it also gives a small rural county the same weight as a populous urban one.
County-level estimates can move sharply in thin housing markets, and Zillow can revise prior observations. This is descriptive analysis, not a prediction. The exact data definition, update process, and limitations are documented on the methodology page.
You can explore every county on the interactive county map or use the state directory to compare the places behind each state median.
Source: Zillow Research's Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI). Calculations by HomePriceMap from the repository's July 31, 2026 county dataset.