Where to Find Your City's House Price Index — the Free Sources Pros Actually Use

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Want to know whether home prices are rising or falling in your city — not the national average?

Four free sources publish a local house price index, and the one most people check first is the slowest. The Federal Housing Finance Agency covers every state and more than 400 metros. Case-Shiller covers the 20 biggest cities. Zillow goes down to the ZIP code. And the National Association of Realtors reports the actual dollar median for about 235 metros. Here is where each one lives, what it costs, and how fresh the numbers are.

Illustration of a city skyline with a rising bar chart and a magnifying glass showing where to find a local house price index.

The Four Sources at a Glance

All four are free to read at the source. The only catch is Case-Shiller: S&P's own site shows limited data, so the free route runs through the St. Louis Fed's FRED database.

Source What it measures Local detail How fresh
FHFA House Price Index Repeat-sales index 50 states, 400+ metros, ZIP codes About 2 months
S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Repeat-sales index 20 metros + national About 2 months
Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) Typical home value Metro, county, ZIP, neighborhood Days to weeks
NAR metro medians Median sale price in dollars About 235 metros Quarterly

FHFA House Price Index: Every State and 400+ Metros

Start here if your city is not one of the 20 biggest. The FHFA House Price Index is the broadest free source, built from tens of millions of home sales and published back to the mid-1970s.

The datasets page looks crowded, so here is the short path to your metro:

  1. Open the FHFA HPI datasets page and look under "Monthly Purchase-Only Indexes." That is the headline series, built from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages.
  2. Download "100 Largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas" as a spreadsheet for the metro ranking, or "States" for the state view. Both come in seasonally adjusted and unadjusted versions.
  3. For smaller areas, use the expanded-data files. The same page offers annual indexes down to counties, three-digit and five-digit ZIP codes, and census tracts.

Two things to know before you quote the number. First, the purchase-only index covers homes financed with conforming mortgages; jumbo and cash sales show up in the expanded-data indexes instead. Second, the release runs about two months behind the month it measures — May 2026 data arrived July 28, 2026, and the latest release covers August 2026, up 2.4% from a year earlier.

FHFA House Price Index datasets

Case-Shiller: The 20 Biggest Cities

The benchmark the headlines quote — but get it from FRED, not from S&P. S&P Global's own site shows only limited Case-Shiller data. The full history for all 20 cities is free on FRED, the St. Louis Fed's database.

  • What it covers: a repeat-sales index of single-family resales in 20 metros — including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Miami, and Seattle — plus 10-city and 20-city composites and a national index, with history back to 1987.
  • How to find it: search FRED for "Case-Shiller" and your city, or pull the national series directly as CSUSHPISA and the 20-city composite as SPCS20RSA.
  • When it lands: on the last Tuesday of the month, about two months after the month it measures. August 2026 data arrived October 27, 2026, with the national index up 2.1% from a year earlier.

If your city is not among the 20, Case-Shiller has nothing for you. That is the index's hard limit — and the reason the FHFA and Zillow sources below exist.

Case-Shiller city indexes on FRED

Zillow ZHVI: Down to Your ZIP Code

The fastest and the most local of the four. The Zillow Home Value Index tracks the typical home — the 35th to 65th percentile of value — smoothed and seasonally adjusted, and it is published within days to a couple of weeks of month-end. October 2026 data was already out by November 7, up 0.7% from a year earlier.

  • Where to get it: Zillow Research publishes CSV downloads for ZHVI, rents, inventory, and days on market at metro, state, county, city, ZIP code, and neighborhood level — ten download sections in all, updated monthly, with no login required to reach the files. Pick the data type, pick the geography, download the CSV.
  • Which version to take: the headline ZHVI is the mid-tier typical home, the 35th to 65th percentile of value. Top-tier (65th to 95th) and bottom-tier (5th to 35th) versions are separate downloads, as are single-family, condo, and by-bedroom cuts.
  • What it is not: a transaction index. ZHVI is a modeled value built from Zestimates, so it can move differently from indexes built on closed sales. Zillow's public API was retired in 2021, and its ZTRAX research database ended in September 2023 — the research downloads are the free route now, and property-level records are not part of it.
  • When to use it: any question about a specific ZIP code or neighborhood, where the other three sources have no data at all.

Zillow Research data downloads

NAR Metro Medians: The Dollar Price, Not an Index

The only one of the four that tells you the price in dollars. The National Association of Realtors' quarterly Metropolitan Median Area Prices and Affordability report lists the median single-family existing-home price for about 235 metro areas, plus affordability data.

The third-quarter 2026 report, released October 29, 2026, puts the national median at $432,900, up 1.7% from a year earlier. Prices rose in 78% of metros, down from 80% in the second quarter. The Northeast led at $561,500, up 4.0%, followed by the Midwest at $342,500, up 3.6%, and the South at $374,900, up 1.0%. The West was the only region where prices fell, down 0.6% to $629,000. San Jose remained the most expensive market at $1,920,000. The next quarterly release is February 3, 2027.

One warning applies to medians that does not apply to indexes. A median moves when the mix of homes sold changes — if more expensive homes sell in a quarter, the median rises even if no identical home gained value. Indexes control for that by tracking repeat sales of the same homes. Use the NAR median for the dollar level, and an index for the trend.

NAR Metropolitan Median Area Prices and Affordability

Which Source Fits Your Question

Match the source to the question, not the other way around. The four sources disagree most when they are asked different questions.

  • Buying or selling in a specific neighborhood: Zillow ZHVI by ZIP code — the fastest and the only one that goes that local.
  • Comparing your metro with others over many years: FHFA HPI — the widest coverage, with history back to the 1970s.
  • Tracking one of the 20 biggest cities: Case-Shiller on FRED — the benchmark the headlines quote.
  • Knowing the actual dollar price in a metro: NAR quarterly medians — plus its affordability figures, like the typical $2,251 monthly payment with 20% down in the third quarter.
  • Checking whether the number is fresh: as of today, the newest data you can get is Zillow's October numbers, NAR's third-quarter medians, and FHFA and Case-Shiller August numbers. If a site quotes you a November figure from the last two, it is a forecast, not a release.

Two companion posts on this blog explain what these numbers mean once you have them. Housing Price Indices Compared puts the four measures side by side for the same months. What Is a Seasonally Adjusted House Price Index? explains why the adjusted version is the one to compare month to month — FHFA and Case-Shiller publish both, Zillow's ZHVI is already adjusted, and NAR medians are not.

Key Takeaway

Your city's house price index is not hiding behind a paywall. FHFA covers the most places, Case-Shiller covers the biggest cities, Zillow covers the smallest areas, and NAR puts a dollar price on about 235 metros — and all four are free to read at the source.

Start with Zillow for your ZIP code, check FHFA for your metro's history, and use Case-Shiller and NAR to put your city in national context.

Sources:

 

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