With interest rates reaching historic lows during the pandemic era, home prices skyrocketed—often creating highly competitive markets for first-time homebuyers. Prices generally plateaued as the Federal Reserve worked to counter inflation in 2022 by increasing interest rates. Now, the Fed has recently begun decreasing rates with a 50 basis point reduction in September. Despite lower inflation and interest rates, data suggests that home prices in some neighborhoods may continue to go up over the next year.
With this in mind, SmartAsset ranked 2,000 of the largest U.S. zip codes based on the projected average dollar increase in home prices between August 2024 and August 2025.
Home prices in these three neighborhoods are forecast to decline by more than 5%. The 88240 neighborhood in Hobbs, New Mexico, is projected to see the highest percent decline in average home prices at -7.4%, or a $12,054 decline on the average $162,908 home price. The 70301 section of Thibodeaux, Louisiana, is forecast to have a -5.6% price drop, or -$12,117. The third-most projected decrease is in the 77705 area of Beaumont, Texas, with a -5.5% drop, or -$6,173.
Neighborhoods are ranked based on the projected dollar increase in home values between August 2024 and August 2025.
Cities were ranked by the largest 12-month forecast from Zillow's Home Value Forecast (ZHVF) metric for all homes (single-family residence, condos, and co-ops) in the top 2,000 zip codes by size. Value change projections are as of Aug. 31, 2024, for Aug. 31, 2025. Projections were applied to August 2024 home value data for each zip code to get the projected average home value increase.
This story was produced by SmartAsset and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.