US condo values up 1% in four years as houses gain 6%, Inman finds

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Condominium values in the United States have risen 1% over the past four years, while the values of houses have risen 6%, according to an analysis of Zillow data that the trade publication Inman published on Monday 5 October 2026. The piece, written by Daniel Houston, also finds that a condo now takes far longer than a house to go under contract, where the two used to move at the same pace.

The weakness of condos in Florida has been reported for some time. What the Inman analysis adds is the claim in its headline: the stall is not confined to Florida. Across the 97 largest metro areas in the country, condos have fallen behind houses almost everywhere over the past year. And the explanation Inman offers is not the one a reader might expect. Its data points to owners listing their units, not to buyers walking away.

Inman is trade press, and the numbers are its own reading of figures produced by Zillow, a listings company. Everything below is attributed on that basis. The analysis has limits, which are set out in a later section.

One per cent against six

The headline comparison uses the Zillow Home Value Index, the listings company's measure of the typical value of a home. Over what Inman calls the past four years of higher mortgage rates, that index rose 1% for condos and 6% for houses. Inman does not give the first and last month of the period, so the two figures are best read as its summary of the four-year stretch, not as a calculation that can be reproduced from the article alone.

A gap of five percentage points over four years is modest. The second measure is more striking, because it shows how widespread the pattern is. Inman compared the appreciation of condos with that of houses inside each of the 97 largest metros. Over four years, condos trailed houses in 68 of them, which leaves 29 metros where condos kept pace or did better. Over the past year alone, condos trailed in 91 of the 97, leaving six.

Put as shares, condos lagged houses in about 70% of large metros over four years and in about 94% over the latest year. The lag has therefore spread: a pattern that held in roughly seven large markets in ten over the longer period now holds in more than nine in ten.

The article itself names no metro area and no state other than Florida. The market-by-market figures sit in an interactive tool and a full report that Inman reserves for its paying subscribers, so the six metros where condos still matched houses over the past year cannot be listed here.

Three weeks longer to find a buyer

Values are one half of the analysis. The other is time. Inman looked at how long a listing takes to go under contract, meaning to reach an accepted offer, and compared condos with houses in the same markets.

Before the pandemic, according to Inman, there was almost nothing between them: 53 days for a condo, 54 for a house. In the twelve months to August 2026, a house took about 51 days and a condo 73.

The two property types have moved in opposite directions. A house goes under contract three days sooner than it did before the pandemic. A condo takes 20 days longer. The result is a gap of 22 days between them, a little over three weeks, where there used to be a single day.

For a listing agent, that is the figure with the most practical weight. A seller of a condo who expects the timetable of the house next door is working from the wrong benchmark, on Inman's numbers. The same holds for a buyer's agent: the typical condo listing has been available for longer by the time an offer is accepted, which is not the case for houses.

These day counts should not be set against the monthly figures that listings companies publish for the whole market. Zillow's own September Market Report, released on 6 October, gives a national median of 29 days for a listing to go pending in September. That is a different measure, for a single month and for all homes together, and it is not comparable with Inman's twelve-month figures for condos and houses in 97 metros. Zillow's release does not mention condos at all.

Florida, and the rest of the country

Florida is the one state the analysis treats separately, and it remains the extreme case. Inman notes that the state's condo market has struggled since the Surfside collapse, without going further into the causes.

According to the analysis, condo and house values in Florida rose together until late 2023, when home values in the state's markets stood nearly 70% above their pre-pandemic level. Inman gives that figure for homes in general, not for each property type. Then they parted. Florida condo values are now 41% above the pre-pandemic level, which means a large part of the gain has been given back, although values remain well above where they started. A typical Florida condo is estimated to sit unsold for about 118 days. That is 45 days longer than the 73 days Inman gives for condos in large metros nationally.

Inman describes Florida as a significant share of the national housing market, though not a dominant one, and as large enough to drag down a national condo average. So the analysis also looks at the country with the Florida markets taken out. The answer is the core of the article. Without Florida, condo values still rise in most markets, but they rise more slowly than house values in the same markets.

That distinction matters for how the story is told. Outside Florida, the analysis does not describe falling condo values. It describes condos that are gaining less than houses, and taking longer to sell.

Sellers arriving faster than buyers

Why would condos lag across so many markets at once? Inman turns to listings and sales to answer, under a subheading that says the pattern is not a buy-side phenomenon.

Its first point is that buyers have not deserted condos in particular. Closed sales of condos and co-ops over the latest twelve months were 22% below pre-pandemic levels. That is a low level of activity, but Inman says it is roughly where condo sales stood in the year before summer 2023, and that condo sales have tracked house sales over the past three years. Demand, in other words, is weak for both property types and has not weakened further for condos.

Supply is where the two differ. In the twelve months to August 2023, new listings of condos and of houses were both 27% below pre-pandemic levels. Less than a year later, according to Inman, new condo listings had recovered to about 15% below, and they have stayed at that level since. New house listings in the same markets have recovered far less.

Condo owners have closed 12 percentage points of the listing shortfall; house owners have closed four. With sales flat over the same stretch, more condos are coming to market for about the same number of buyers. That is consistent with both of Inman's findings: values that barely move, and listings that wait longer for an offer. Inman's own summary is that owners outside Florida, too, have been eager to list condos and co-ops.

The analysis stops there. It does not say why condo owners have been readier to list than house owners, and it gives no detail on association fees, insurance, special assessments or state law. Those explanations may be offered elsewhere; they are not part of what Inman measured.

What the analysis does not show

Several limits are worth keeping in mind before the figures are quoted to a client.

The figures describe typical values and typical listings across large metros. They say nothing about a given building or neighbourhood, and they cover large metro areas only. The Florida day count is described as an estimate. And because the article names no metro, a reader cannot tell from it whether a particular city is among the 91 where condos trailed over the past year or among the six where they did not.

There is also no named economist or agent quoted in the piece. The conclusions are Inman's own, drawn from data it analysed itself.

The wider market in the same weeks

The condo figures arrive as the whole for-sale market slows. Zillow's September report puts the typical US home value at US$366,913, down 0.5% from August and up 1% on the year, with mortgage rates ending the month at 7.28%, a level the company, citing Freddie Mac, calls the highest since November 2023. Zillow's national figure covers all homes together, and its 1% is an annual change, so it is not the same statistic as Inman's four-year 1% for condos.

One point of comparison is useful. Zillow says new listings nationally were 11.9% below its pre-pandemic baseline in September. Inman's shortfalls of 15% for condos and 23% for houses are larger, but they are twelve-month figures for a set of large metros, and neither source defines its baseline, so the three numbers cannot be lined up precisely. What they share is the direction: fewer owners are listing than before the pandemic, in every series.

Sellers of all property types are also adjusting their prices. An Inman report of 30 September said Redfin found 21.1% of sellers with active listings had cut their price in the four weeks to 20 September, up from 19.8% a year earlier and the highest share for that point in the year in records that begin in 2022. A second national listings portal, in its September housing report, put the share of listings with a price cut at 20.8%, which it called the highest September rate since 2018, according to the same Inman article. Neither figure separates condos from houses. Miami, at 13.7%, was among the metros with the fewest price cuts in Redfin's ranking, a reminder that a metro-wide number can sit oddly beside a statewide story about one property type.

What to watch next

Inman's twelve-month figures run to August 2026, so they pre-date the September slowdown that Zillow reported on 6 October, when newly pending sales fell 8.5% on the year. Whether condos or houses bore more of that fall is not something either source says.

Zillow expects to publish its October Market Report on 5 November. That release, like September's, may not break out condos, but it will show whether the national trend the condo figures sit inside has continued. On the condo question itself, the detail is in the subscriber report behind Inman's article, where the comparison can be read one market at a time.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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