Data Analysis

Redfin says Miami house prices rose 6.9% in a year. The median Miami sale fell. Both are true.

The Redfin Home Price Index for July, published August 18, has national prices up 3.4% on the year and five Florida metros scattered from +8.9% to -0.4%. Read what the index measures before reading the number.

US home prices rose 0.27% from June and 3.4% from a year ago, Redfin reported August 18, while 20 of the 49 large metros it published posted a monthly decline. "Despite the sluggishness of the overall housing market, home-price growth is proving to be surprisingly resilient," said Chen Zhao, Redfin's head of economics research.

Five Florida metros appear in the release, and they do not tell one story:

The index is a repeat-sales measure: it tracks single-family homes that have sold at least twice and compares each sale to the same home's previous sale, seasonally adjusted, over the three months ending July 31. That design is the key to reading the Florida rows.

The Miami row is the lesson

Redfin has Miami single-family prices up 6.9% in a year. Our own MLS data for Miami-Dade has the median July sale at $545,000, down 0.9% from last July's $550,000.

Neither number is wrong. They measure different things.

A repeat-sales index follows the same house through time, so it is immune to the mix of what happens to sell in a given month. A median is the mix. Miami-Dade closings are increasingly weighted toward condos, the segment with three and a half sellers per buyer in Redfin's own buyers-and-sellers data, and a median dragged down by heavy condo volume can fall while the typical house resells for more than it did.

So when a Miami condo owner reads that prices rose 6.9% and wonders why the offers say otherwise, the answer is that the 6.9% was never about condos. The index excludes them.

Where the two measures agree, the signal is stronger. West Palm Beach is Redfin's fifth-strongest metro in the country at +8.9%, and our Palm Beach County median is up 10.6% on the year to $525,500. Same direction, same size, two different methods. That is what a real price move looks like.

The rest of the state sits between those poles in our July medians: St. Petersburg +4.1%, Tampa +3.8%, Jacksonville +1.3%, Orlando -0.9%.

What this number does not mean

The index covers single-family homes only. No condos, no townhomes, and Florida's sharpest weakness is in condos, so the index structurally understates what condo owners are experiencing.

It also excludes a home's first sale, because a new build has no prior sale to compare against. In markets where builders are cutting prices, that discounting does not appear here.

A 0.27% national monthly move is smaller than the index's ordinary revision noise, and the three-month window means July's print still contains May and June closings.

And no index values your home. It describes a pool of repeat sales in a metro whose boundaries are Redfin's, not a property.

If you are in this market

Selling a single-family home in Palm Beach County, both methods say the market has paid meaningfully more this year than last. That supports firm pricing, not aspirational pricing; the gap between the two is still measured in days on market.

Selling a condo in South Florida, ignore the 6.9% headline. Your comparable set is condo closings in your own building and submarket over the last ninety days.

Buying a house in Jacksonville or Orlando, the flat-to-negative readings in both Redfin's index and our medians describe markets where a year of waiting has not cost buyers anything on price. What it costs is selection.

Limitations

The index figures are Redfin's, computed by its repeat-sales methodology; we cannot audit them, and they are subject to revision. Redfin publishes only the 50 most populous US metros, of which 49 carried sufficient data this month; Fort Lauderdale does not appear in the published table, so Broward County is missing from the metro comparison. Redfin's metro boundaries do not match our market definitions exactly: our figures are county-footprint medians from licensed MLS feeds, not seasonally adjusted, and a median is sensitive to the mix of what sold in the month. The median-versus-index contrast drawn above is directional, not a reconciliation; the two methods differ in geography, property scope and adjustment, and no exact crosswalk exists.

Sources and links

• Redfin, Home Price Index, July 2026
• Redfin, Home Price Index methodology
• Data hubs: /data/miami/, /data/west-palm-beach/, /data/tampa/, /data/st-petersburg/, /data/orlando/, /data/jacksonville/
• Related: /news/florida/florida-condo-sellers-outnumber-buyers-july-2026/

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.