Press Release
10 things to know about the property market: April 2026
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IRVINE, Calif., April 30, 2026 — Cotality, a leading global property information, analytics, and data-enabled solutions provider, released its latest list on the 10 things to know about the property market for April 2026.
The U.S. housing market is entering the second quarter with warning signs. Sellers are starting to cut list prices and serious delinquencies are ticking up. Pressure from rising escrow costs is pushing up monthly payments on homes that cost far more than they did pre-pandemic. That dynamic has created a market where affordability is strained. It may be t hat the market is hitting a ceiling: home prices are flattening out and rent growth is slowing.
Housing Market Trends
- Home price growth is stabilizing. After seven consecutive months of slight home price declines, the latest Cotality HPI data indicates the slowdown is leveling off. Home prices edged up by 0.04% in February, with early March figures suggesting a further 0.34% gain. That’s because homeowners are listing their properties for less. Sellers are losing leverage, and homes are going on the market for 1.1% cheaper year-over-year. Still, prices remain 48% above their pre-pandemic levels, which is a continuing challenge to affordability for many buyers.
- Regional price grow varies widely. Affordable markets experienced the largest cumulative home price growth. Knoxville, TN and Camden, NJ saw the biggest leaps since March 2020, with 84% and 82% increases, respectively. Other top markets include Charleston, SC; West Palm Beach, FL; Hartford, CT; and Providence, RI, which are all up at least 70%. In contrast, areas such as California’s San Francisco, Bay Area, New Orleans, Washington D.C., and New York’s metro divisions saw gains under 25%.
- California’s housing market started 2026 slowly. New listings in the Golden State were down 10% year over year in Q1. Statewide 19 of 25 metros saw declines, with some of the largest drops in San Diego (down −24%), San Francisco (down over 10%) and Riverside (down over 10%). List and sale prices were flat year over year, and inventory at the end of March was 11% lower than 2025.
- American homeowners are wealthier than ever on paper, but many people can’t access that money. California holds roughly a quarter of the nation’s tappable home equity, but accounts for only about 12% of active HELOC balances. This highlights how a massive store of wealth remains underutilized even as many households, particularly younger workers, have limited liquidity to weather economic shocks.
- The rental market is softening as single-family rent growth cooled to 1.1% year over year in February. Rent growth slowed across all price tiers, but higher-income households’ greater capacity to absorb cost increases resulted in higher-cost rentals demonstrated more resilience, posting 2.0% growth year-over-year. There are not only price tier differences but geographic differences. Still, the general trend is deceleration, although not as fast as in months prior. Fewer metros posting annual declines than in January. Los Angeles also recorded its first annual decline since the 2025 wildfires, suggesting rents are moving back toward pre-wildfire levels.
Mortgage Market Trends
- The average homeowner may need to pay $175 more per month to cover escrow costs. Approximately 65% of homeowners’ escrow accounts are projected to experience shortages in 2026 due to escalating insurance premiums and property taxes. Over the past five years, escrow-related expenses — including insurance and property taxes — have increased by roughly 45%. Notably, homeowners in Florida and Colorado have seen increases of 70% and 77%, respectively. This year, the average escrow shortage anticipated to be $2,100.
- Large investors may be starting to pull back. Investors purchased 27% of single‑family homes in March, only slightly down from 29% a year earlier. Mega investors — those owning more than 1,000 properties — accounted for most of the decline. Mega investor market share fell from 2.4% to 1.2%. This holding pattern may reflect concerns about potential legislative action that could restrict or ban investor home purchases. Many may wait for greater policy clarity before resuming acquisitions.
- Non-Qualified Mortgage (non-QM) loans made up about 9% of the total mortgage market (by amount) in 2025, up 1.7 percentage points from the previous year. The share of this loan type dipped below 7% in 2020 during the pandemic but has since nearly doubled to over 12% by 2022. Today's non-QM market is smaller, more disciplined, and focused on borrowers, with recent growth reflecting changing borrower profiles rather than risky lending.
- The frozen market is beginning to unlock. More borrowers hold mortgages with interest rates that are closer to current averages. In February, the weighted average outstanding mortgage rate reached 4.27%, its highest level since early 2015. Additionally, the gap between the outstanding mortgage rate and the prevailing 30-year mortgage rate decreased to 1.8 percentage points, down from a peak of 3.9 percentage points in October 2023.
- More mortgages are falling into serious delinquency. The share of seriously delinquent mortgages (90 days-past-due or more) slightly increased to 1.14% in February 2026 from the same time last year. The serious delinquency rates for Federal Housing Administration (FHA), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and conventional loans were 5.57%, 2.19%, and 0.67%, respectively. Conventional loan delinquency rates remained stable, while the rate for VA loans declined by 30 basis points. Notably, the serious delinquency rate for FHA loans increased by 170 basis points year-over-year.
Year-over-year change in median new listing price for March 2026
Data source: Cotality, 2026
About Cotality
Cotality accelerates data, insights, and workflows across the property ecosystem to enable industry professionals to surpass their ambitions and impact society. With billions of real-time data signals across the life cycle of a property, we unearth hidden risks and transformative opportunities for agents, lenders, carriers, and innovators. Get to know us at www.cotality.com.
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