Weekly Special | June 23, 2025

How Home Prices Have Changed This Decade

The US is suffering the greatest home affordability crisis on record, and Tallahassee has been affected too.

The graph in today’s report shows the median existing home price in navy blue, the median new home price in red, and the overall median home price in light blue. The yellow line shows the premium that buyers are paying to purchase a new home.

Currently, the new construction premium is at 48%, as new home prices remain above $400K for the fourth straight year.

Every market area is witnessing huge inflation rates for new construction homes, with new home prices up nearly 5% annually since 2003. Markets that are growing are seeing existing home prices pulled higher by the new construction inflation rate.

From 2003 through today, Tallahassee’s median existing home price has gone from $140,900 to $305,000, an annual growth rate of 3.66%, and remember that includes the declining years from 2008 through 2012. Since 2012, existing homes have risen nearly 6%, a rate that so high as to make many Tallahasseans unable to afford a home.

How Do We Fix This Mess?

I do not think it prudent to hope that the federal government is going to provide solutions, as Washington always looks for ways to impact the demand side of the supply and demand imbalance. To solve Tallahassee’s home affordability crisis, we need to see our elected officials step up and act like leaders.

We must look at ways of increasing density and streamlining the development process, which is both costly and time consuming which only adds to the cost of building the homes that this crisis needs to bring affordability back to Tallahassee.

The original one-page Weekly Special PDF is still available.