08/11/2026
Homepros
What Your Home Is Really Worth
And Why Most Housing Headlines Get It Wrong
When you hear that “home prices are up” or “the market is back,” the first question should be: **according to which measure?** The answer matters more than most headlines let on.
Many reports rely on **average price**, but averages are easily distorted by a handful of luxury home sales. One multimillion-dollar closing can make it look like every home became more valuable, even if most properties didn’t change at all.
**Median price** is better because it ignores those extreme sales, but it still has a blind spot. If larger homes happen to sell more often in a given month, the median price rises—even if the value of homes hasn’t changed.
The most reliable way to measure the market is **median price per square foot**. It adjusts for differences in home size while also avoiding the influence of high-end outliers, making it the clearest picture of what a typical home is actually worth.
Using that measurement tells a very different story than many headlines.
# # # Since the Market Peak...
Although single-family homes have held up better than other property types, **every major dwelling type in Greater Phoenix remains below its peak.**
Even more importantly, once inflation is taken into account, the declines are significantly larger than the nominal prices suggest.
* 🏡 **Single-Family Detached:** Down nearly **20%** in real (inflation-adjusted) value since the peak.
* 🏘️ **Townhomes:** Down about **23%**.
* 🏢 **Apartment-Style Condos:** The hardest hit, down roughly **30%**.
* 🏠 **Patio Homes:** Appeared to peak in 2024 using nominal prices, but after adjusting for inflation, their true peak was actually in **September 2022**, with values now down more than **22%** from that level.
# # The Bottom Line
The market isn’t as simple as many headlines make it seem. Depending on the statistic being used, two reports can describe the same market very differently.
*Source: Cromford® Report analysis using Greater Phoenix residential resale data and Phoenix Metro Consumer Price Index (CPI), through July 2026.*
