TerraVue

TerraVue / Markets

Buy vs rent, by market

Home price appreciation and rent for 50 US markets, built from FHFA repeat-sales data through 2025 — at the ZIP level, not a national average.

The percentage beside each city is TerraVue's forward estimate: 60% of its long-run record blended with 40% of the last three years. The national baseline on that same basis is 4.02% a year. Each city page shows the underlying history separately and breaks it down ZIP by ZIP — the spread inside a single city is routinely wider than the gap between cities.

Arizona

Mesa — 3.0%Phoenix — 3.4%Tucson — 3.2%

California

Bakersfield — 3.0%Fresno — 2.9%Long Beach — 3.3%Los Angeles — 3.5%Oakland — 0.6%Sacramento — 1.8%San Diego — 3.8%San Francisco — 2.2%San Jose — 3.1%

Colorado

Colorado Springs — 2.8%Denver — 3.2%

District of Columbia

Washington — 2.2%

Florida

Jacksonville — 3.4%Miami — 7.0%Orlando — 4.4%

Georgia

Atlanta — 3.6%

Illinois

Chicago — 3.4%

Indiana

Indianapolis — 4.2%

Kansas

Wichita — 4.4%

Kentucky

Louisville/Jefferson County — 4.3%

Maryland

Baltimore — 3.1%

Massachusetts

Boston — 4.5%

Michigan

Detroit — 3.9%

Minnesota

Minneapolis — 1.9%

Missouri

Kansas City — 4.3%

Nebraska

Omaha — 4.1%

Nevada

Las Vegas — 3.3%

New Mexico

Albuquerque — 4.1%

New York

New York — 4.0%

North Carolina

Charlotte — 5.3%Raleigh — 4.6%

Ohio

Columbus — 4.6%

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City — 3.8%Tulsa — 4.6%

Oregon

Portland — 2.4%

Pennsylvania

Philadelphia — 3.8%

Tennessee

Memphis — 3.1%Nashville-Davidson — 4.7%

Texas

Austin — 3.4%Dallas — 4.7%El Paso — 5.3%Fort Worth — 3.8%Houston — 4.7%San Antonio — 3.6%

Virginia

Virginia Beach — 4.1%

Washington

Seattle — 3.1%

Wisconsin

Milwaukee — 4.9%

Run it on an actual property

This page describes US housing markets in aggregate. Whether buying beats renting depends on the price you'd pay, your down payment, and how long you'd stay — TerraVue simulates about 1,000 market scenarios on those inputs and returns the probability, not a single guessed number.

Analyze a property free →

How these numbers are calculated

Appreciation comes from the FHFA House Price Index — a repeat-sales index that tracks the same homes over time, which is why it isn't distorted by a change in the mix of what sold in a given year. TerraVue reads it at the ZIP level, back to 1975 where coverage allows.

The forward estimate blends 60% of the longest available look-back (20 years where available) with 40% of the most recent 3 years. Long-run history is the more reliable signal, but a market that has genuinely changed pace should not be ignored — the 60/40 split is the compromise, and it's the same figure TerraVue's simulation uses.

The national comparison is the population-weighted average of these same blended ZIP-level figures, so it compares like with like.

The FHFA index measures rates of change, not price levels. These pages therefore describe how fast prices have moved, never what a home costs — that number depends on the specific property, and it's the one input you supply when you run an analysis.