Cotality, a global property information, analytics, and data-enabled solutions provider, released its latest list on the 10 things to know about the property market for March 2026. The U.S. housing market is finding its equilibrium. Home price growth has stabilized. Unsold inventory is growing. Rental price growth is decelerating.
However, there are still distinct regional divergences. Certain areas in the Northeast and Midwest continue to show resilience to slower price growth pressures, but markets across the Sun Belt and the West are experiencing corrections in both pricing and demand. As the U.S. begins its shift from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market, those looking for new homes are gaining negotiation leverage. But not everyone can buy. That leaves many renters, but the silver lining is that rent prices across the U.S. are also decelerating. Nevertheless, affordability challenges persist for renters due to the cumulative rent increases from previous years.
In the mortgage sector, while total homeowner equity has seen a modest decline, a substantial amount of untapped wealth remains. Homeowners are increasingly looking to credit lines to access this liquidity. Meanwhile, adjustable-rate products have transitioned into a primary tool for maintaining affordability in high-cost regions.
1. 2026 started with sluggish home price growth. In January, price growth was a mere 0.7%. About 34% of the largest 100 markets showed yearly declines, matching December 2025 numbers and indicating that price cooling might stabilize soon. Stabilization is especially likely since only 11 out of these 34 areas continued to cool in January, while the rest experienced a slower rate of depreciation. However, it’s too early to draw firm conclusions, as these changes correspond to a typically slower seasonal period.
2. The current housing market is defined by a sharp regional split. Florida, Texas, and the West are seeing the greatest number of declining markets, with Florida alone housing seven of the 10 steepest annual home price declines. In the Sunshine State, the North Port metropolitan area saw the sharpest fall in prices which dropped 6% from a year earlier and 8% below their peak. The only Mid-Atlantic/Northeastern metro showing a drop in home prices was Frederick-Gaithersburg-Bethesda, MD (down 1.5%). In contrast, the Northeast and Midwest are the primary drivers of growth. Outside of the dip in Maryland, the Northeast led the way with cities like Newark, NJ and Hartford, CT seeing gains of over 6%. This resilience extends to the Midwest, where Chicago and Milwaukee continue to stand out. While the Sun Belt cools, a few outliers like New Orleans and Philadelphia are seeing their price growth accelerate, highlighting just how fractured the market has become.
3. Unsold inventory continues to expand nationwide, but the rate is slowing. Growth in housing inventory continued to outpace sales nationwide in February. Months’ supply — calculated as total for-sale inventory divided by the number of pending sales — was 4.5 months in February 2026. That’s about one week more than the same period in 2025. This small increase is only half the rate of expansion seen a year prior and reinforces Cotality’s findings that the market is cooling overall. Supply increased the most in the Mid-Atlantic, with the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the Washington, D.C. metro areas each rising by more than three months to have more than six-months supply of unsold listings. Unsold inventory decreased in Florida to a nearly six and a half months’ supply, but still remained well above the national average.
4. Buyers continue to see increases in negotiating leverage. In February, 78% of home purchases closed below asking price, up 3 percentage points from February 2025. Today’s buyers are seeing negotiation power that is reminiscent of the pre-pandemic market. The result is that nearly twice as many homes are selling for under asking price as compared to February 2022 when just 44% of houses closed below asking. The Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C. metro areas saw particularly large shifts. Each city saw the share of deals closing below asking price spike to around 60%, which is a 10 percentage point jump from a year prior. In Florida the share of discounted deals rose less than one percentage point, remaining above 90%. Texas, California, and New York State saw modest increases of 1.8, 4.5, and 3.5 percentage points to 88%, 61%, and 61% respectively.
5. Annual single-family rent growth slowed to 1.3% in January. Even with January’s rent increase coming in at half of last year’s pace — and 3.4% below the long-term average — affordability remains a concern. Since 2020, rents are up 32% (about $600 per month) and remain 11%, or roughly $300 per month, higher than the 2022 peak. Chicago and Philadelphia saw rents increase the most, while rents in some Florida markets fell. Despite rent decreases in Florida, Miami single-family home rents are up 51%, or about $900 per month, since 2019.
6. Borrower equity fell 2.8% to an average of $295,000 in 2025, with losses concentrated in the West and South. There were 22 states — primarily in the Northeast and Midwest —where equity increased. California and Florida drove the national decline, where borrower equity dropped $25,000 and $30,000, respectively. These regional differences reflect how elevated risk profiles are not uniform and are beginning to erode borrowers’ equity cushions.
7. U.S. homeowners held $10.7 trillion in tappable equity in 2025, yet 97% remained unused, underscoring a persistent “house rich, cash poor” dynamic. Liquidity is heavily concentrated in California. The state holds 25% of all tappable equity but accounted for only 12% of 2025 HELOC originations. Most of that equity was concentrated among older households, which often rely on other assets before tapping home equity.
8. Home equity lending, including both closed loans and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), reached its highest level since 2023. Lenders issued over 653,000 new home equity loans totaling $40 billion and authorized 1.5 million HELOCs worth $271 billion in 2025. HELOC counts rose 7.1% and volume increased 17.8%, while the number of home equity loans fell 2.8% but their total volume edged up 0.5% in 2025 compared to the previous year.
9. Mortgage rates hit levels that may encourage refinances. The 30-year mortgage rate was about 6.2% in mid-March, and while 86% of outstanding mortgages have rates below 6.25%, there is a sizable number of borrowers holding rates higher than 6.75%. Since the 2022 surge in mortgage rates, over 2.5 million loans were originated with mortgage rates above 6.75% and over 1.2 million loans with rates over 7%. If active loans originated before 2022 are added, there are roughly 3.1 million loans with rates over 6.75% and over 1.6 million with rates over 7%.
10. The rise of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) is most evident in high-cost markets where affordability gaps are at their largest. In California, ARMs made up over 31% of mortgage originations in 2025, and Cotality recorded notable increases of this mortgage type in the District of Columbia (28%) and Massachusetts (about 24%). In these areas, ARMs have transitioned from being a niche choice for risk-tolerant buyers to a crucial option for those looking to break into the market or upgrade to a larger home.
