ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property data, and real estate analytics, has officially published the released from its Year-End 2024 U.S. Home Sales Report.
Going by the available details, this particular report goes on to reveal that home sellers made a $122,500 profit on typical sales nationwide in 2024, generating an aggregated return of 53.8 percent on investment.
However, despite the fact that both measures remained near record levels, and home prices kept rising around the country, the profit margin on median-priced sales nationwide decreased from 56.9 percent seen during 2023. The stated drop-off would mark the second straight annual decline, continuing a pattern of consecutive downturns that hadn’t happened since the aftermath of Great Recession of 2000s.
Markedly enough, the downward investment-return trend continued even with median national home price rising 5 percent to yet another annual record of $350,000. In essence, margins would shrink down meaningfully, as the increase in home values failed to keep up with larger price spikes that recent sellers had to bear when they originally bought their homes.
To expand further upon the newly-published data, among 127 metropolitan statistical areas with a population greater than 200,000, sellers across more expensive markets around the U.S. generally reaped the highest returns on investment during 2024.
From a geographical standpoint, the Northeast, South and West regions led the way with 29 of the 30 highest ROIs. As for cities, they had San Jose, CA (105.8 percent return on investment); Knoxville, TN (94.3 percent); Ocala, FL (87.1 percent); Seattle, WA (85.6 percent), and Scranton, PA (85 percent), right at the top of this pile.
“The U.S. housing market mostly rebounded nicely in 2024. Prices went back up at a healthy clip and homeowners continued to make some of the best profits on sales in the past 25 years. The renewed shine, however, didn’t come without a bit of tarnish as margins took another turn for the worse,” said Rob Barber, CEO, ATTOM. “Amid generally good news, that’s something worth following closely in 2025. Home prices are stretching household budgets more and more, and mortgage rates have been going back up in recent months even as other forces put more upwards pressure on prices.”
Next up, we must dig into how, after a weak annual gain of just 1.1 percent in 2023, the U.S. median home price ended up increasing another 4.9 percent in 2024, hitting the latest all-time high of $350,000. As for the typical 2024 price, it was almost 2 ½ times the nationwide median in 2011.
Moving on, with the tight supply of properties for sale, median values went up last year in 115, or 91 percent, of the 127 metropolitan statistical areas. Here, areas that boasted the biggest year-over-year increases were Evansville, IN (median up 13.4 percent); Augusta, GA (up 13.2 percent); Albany, NY (up 12.3 percent); Fort Wayne, IN (up 12.2 percent), and Scranton, PA (up 12.1 percent).
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in a piece of data, which claims that largest median-price increases in metro areas, with a population of at least 1 million in 2024, came across Hartford CT, (up 11.1 percent); New York, NY (up 9.6 percent); Rochester, NY (up 9.5 percent); Detroit, MI (up 9.5 percent) and Providence, RI (up 9.4 percent).
Apart from this, we must also acknowledge how profit margins on typical home sales went down from 2023 to 2024 in 93 of the 127 metro areas, by 73 percent.
The 10 largest decreases in investment returns were all across the South stratosphere. The stated contingent is led by Fayetteville, AR (ROI down from 71.9 percent in 2023 to 51.3 percent in 2024); Ocala, FL (down from 105.7 percent to 87.1 percent); Sarasota, FL (down from 80.6 percent to 64.6 percent); and Chattanooga, TN (down from 80.6 percent to 65.9 percent).
On the other hand, the biggest increases in investment returns, from 2023 to 2024, came in Syracuse, NY (ROI up from 56 percent to 69.3 percent); Rochester, NY (up from 61.9 percent to 72.3 percent), and Evansville, IN (up from 34.6 percent to 44.7 percent)
