Data Analysis

Florida's six largest metros ran from a 10.4 percent annual price gain in West Palm Beach to 0.4 percent in Jacksonville in August 2026, a ten point spread inside one state, according to the Redfin Home Price Index.

Miami rose 8.0 percent over the year and Tampa 4.1 percent, both above the national 3.7 percent. Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Jacksonville came in below it. Fort Lauderdale was the only Florida metro whose prices fell on the month.

Florida home prices rose 10.4 percent over the year in West Palm Beach and 0.4 percent in Jacksonville in August 2026, according to the Redfin Home Price Index published September 22. Miami rose 8.0 percent, Tampa 4.1 percent, and Orlando and Fort Lauderdale 1.8 percent each. Nationally the index rose 0.25 percent on the month and 3.7 percent over the year, which Redfin calls the fastest annual growth rate in a year. Three of Florida's six metros beat that national figure and three came in under it.

How can one state have a ten point spread?

Because Florida is not one housing market, and this release is unusually clear evidence of it.

The gap between West Palm Beach at 10.4 percent and Jacksonville at 0.4 percent is 10.0 points. That is a wider spread than the distance between the national figure and either end of it. A buyer in Palm Beach County and a buyer in Duval County were looking at the same calendar month and completely different price trajectories.

The monthly figures tell a slightly different story from the annual ones and are worth reading alongside them. On the month, seasonally adjusted, Orlando and West Palm Beach both rose 0.7 percent, Jacksonville 0.4 percent, Miami 0.2 percent, Tampa was flat at 0.0 percent, and Fort Lauderdale fell 0.5 percent. Fort Lauderdale was the only Florida metro in the index where prices declined month over month.

Orlando and Fort Lauderdale are a useful pair. Both posted exactly 1.8 percent annual growth, but Orlando rose 0.7 percent on the month while Fort Lauderdale fell 0.5 percent. Identical annual figures, opposite recent direction. An annual rate summarizes twelve months and can conceal a turn that happened in the last one.

Which Florida metros beat the national rate?

Three did. West Palm Beach at 10.4 percent, Miami at 8.0 percent and Tampa at 4.1 percent all came in above the national 3.7 percent. Orlando and Fort Lauderdale at 1.8 percent and Jacksonville at 0.4 percent came in below. That three and three split is this desk's count against Redfin's published national figure.

South Florida carried the top of the list. West Palm Beach and Miami are the two strongest Florida metros in the release and they sit 2.4 points apart. Redfin reports that San Francisco posted the biggest annual gain among the 50 metros it covers, at 12 percent. West Palm Beach at 10.4 percent is 1.6 points below that, but this article does not claim where West Palm Beach placed nationally.

Redfin also identifies St. Louis and Pittsburgh as having the fastest month-over-month growth among those 50 metros, and attributes strength in the luxury segment partly to affluent buyers in Florida.

Chen Zhao, Redfin's head of economics, is quoted in the release saying that slowing price growth is good news for buyers because it means waiting for the right home is less likely to come with a rapidly rising price tag.

Why does this disagree with the Case-Shiller numbers?

This is the part that should make anyone cautious about a single index reading, and neither publisher draws the comparison.

The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller index for July 2026, released September 29, put Miami at 3.53 percent annual growth and Tampa at negative 0.73 percent. The Redfin index for August 2026 puts Miami at 8.0 percent and Tampa at 4.1 percent. That is a gap of 4.47 points on Miami and 4.83 points on Tampa, and on Tampa the two indexes do not even agree on direction. One says Tampa prices fell over the year. The other says they rose.

Both are repeat-sales indexes. Redfin's own methodology note says its index measures how sale prices have changed since those same homes previously sold, describes it as similar to Case-Shiller, and says it is reported about a month earlier. So this is not a case of two different things being measured in two different ways.

Three things could account for the gap and this desk cannot weigh them from the published material. The readings are one month apart, July against August, though a five point move in an annual rate in a single month would be extraordinary. The two indexes may define the Miami and Tampa metro areas differently. And they draw on different transaction samples, Case-Shiller from its arms-length sales universe and Redfin from its own records.

What a Florida seller should take from this is narrower than either headline: the direction and size of the last year of price movement in Tampa is genuinely uncertain, and any single figure quoting it carries more error than the decimal places suggest. Current conditions for these markets are on the Miami and Tampa pages, with statewide trends on the Florida housing tracker and the full market index at Florida Housing Intelligence.

Limitations

The Redfin index covers the 50 most populous US metro areas. Every ranking or superlative in this article is scoped to that group, not to the country. Redfin's claim that San Francisco posted the biggest annual gain, and that St. Louis and Pittsburgh had the fastest monthly growth, are claims about those 50 metros only.

No national rank is stated here for any Florida metro. Two separate reads of the release disagreed on whether it prints a full ranked table of all 50 metros, and the desk could not settle the question or retrieve such a table, so it claims no placement beyond what Redfin states in prose. West Palm Beach at 10.4 percent is below San Francisco at 12 percent, and that is the only placement claim this article makes.

Redfin's month-over-month figures are seasonally adjusted, which the release states. Its year-over-year figures carry no such note. Case-Shiller publishes both adjusted and unadjusted series and its headline annual figures are unadjusted, a further difference between the two sets of numbers compared here, though seasonal adjustment has little effect on a twelve-month change.

The comparison with Case-Shiller crosses reference months, July against August. It also crosses two publishers' metro definitions, which this desk did not reconcile because neither release publishes the county composition of its metro areas in a form that could be compared. The gap is reported as a gap, with no claim about which index is closer to correct.

Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach are not in the Case-Shiller 20-city composite, so no cross-index comparison is available for them and none is offered.

The ten point Florida spread, the three-and-three split against the national rate, the 2.4 points between West Palm Beach and Miami, and the point gaps against Case-Shiller are all this desk's arithmetic on published figures. Redfin printed none of them.

Redfin's methodology sentence is paraphrased rather than quoted because the published wording uses punctuation this publication does not carry. The substance is unchanged.

Figures were read twice from Redfin's report page, the second read asking only for verbatim transcription of the six metro rows. Both reads returned identical values on all twelve figures. No press-release version of the August 2026 index was located on Redfin's own surfaces, so the table rests on a single source page.

Sources

Redfin, U.S. Home Prices Rose 0.25% in August, published September 22, 2026: https://www.redfin.com/news/home-price-index-august-2026/

Redfin Home Price Index data center: https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/home-price-index/

S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, July 2026, released September 29, 2026, used for the cross-index comparison: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sp-cotality-case-shiller-index-reports-annual-gain-in-july-2026-302893034.html

Disclosure: Jon Brooks is a co-founder of Momentum Realty, a Florida real estate brokerage that owns and funds Florida Housing Intelligence. Momentum has a financial interest in Florida real estate transactions, including in markets named here. See our editorial standards.