A stretch of central Phoenix running through Midtown and Uptown just posted the single biggest home-price jump anywhere in metro Phoenix over the past year, with values climbing 44.2% even as the broader market barely inched forward. The gain stands out starkly against a metro area where price growth has mostly been stuck in neutral.
The 44.2% figure, reported by azcentral.com and The Arizona Republic, marks the largest annual increase recorded in the metro area. It comes at a time when the typical Phoenix home has moved only modestly: the median sale price in Phoenix sat at $452,000 over the three months ending in September, up just 0.5% from the same stretch a year earlier, according to Redfin data on the Phoenix housing market. Those same Redfin figures show homes in the city now spend a median of 60 days on the market, down slightly from 63 days a year ago, while September sales dipped to 3,810 closings from 3,880 the year before.
A Metro Where Flat Is the Norm
Zoom out to all of 2025, and the pattern holds: median home prices across metro Phoenix were flat overall for the year. Apache Junction and central Phoenix were among the few areas to buck that trend with double-digit increases, the same azcentral.com reporting notes, while Desert Ridge in north Phoenix and north Glendale went the opposite direction, posting double-digit price drops over the same period.
Sales activity, at least, has shown more life than prices. Existing single-family home sales across metro Phoenix rose 5.1% during the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same stretch in 2025, according to Phoenix REALTORS data cited by azbigmedia.com. The year-to-date median price for a metro single-family home rose just 1% over that stretch, to $485,000, the outlet reported.
Seller's Markets Cluster Near the Core
Where a buyer or seller has the upper hand still depends heavily on geography. The Cromford Market Index identified 13 interior metro Phoenix cities as seller's markets, topped by Chandler, Fountain Hills and Tempe, per a report from ABC15. Another 13 cities on the outskirts of the metro remained buyer's markets, led by Goodyear, Surprise and Queen Creek, the same index found. Cave Creek, Peoria, Laveen and Tolleson landed in between, classified as balanced markets where supply and demand are roughly equal, according to the report, which also described the spring selling season as sluggish overall despite those pockets of seller strength.
City-by-city comparables from the first seven months of 2026 illustrate just how uneven conditions have been. Scottsdale saw closed sales rise 13.5% year to date while its median price climbed 4.1% to $1.26 million, the azbigmedia.com report found. Buckeye, meanwhile, saw sales rise 9.1% even as its median price slipped 2.4% to $400,000, and Avondale posted a 5.6% sales decline alongside a modest 1.1% price gain to $419,490. Gilbert's closed deals rose 3.8%, but its median single-family price edged down 0.1% to $599,450, per the same account.
Carefree and the Long Memory of Phoenix's Price Swings
The Midtown-Uptown surge isn't the first time a small slice of the valley has dramatically outpaced its neighbors. Earlier this year, the town of Carefree saw its median home price shoot up 53% to $1,492,500 during the 12 months ending March 31 — a bigger increase than any other ZIP code in the Phoenix area, according to the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service data cited by azcentral.com. That kind of volatility has a history in the region: back in the fourth quarter of 2023, north Scottsdale's 85262 ZIP code, home to Desert Mountain, posted a more than 40% median price increase, while east Phoenix's 85018 ZIP, covering half of the Arcadia neighborhood, jumped almost 37%, according to a report from finance.yahoo.com. That same period saw central Apache Junction's 85120 ZIP plunge almost 69%, a reversal from the 125% spike it had seen just two quarters earlier, illustrating how quickly narrow pockets of the valley can swing in either direction.
Metro Phoenix's median home price overall rose more than 3% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with a year earlier, with most neighborhoods rebounding from the sharper declines of 2022, per the finance.yahoo.com report. Three years later, the pattern of uneven, neighborhood-by-neighborhood swings persists — with a corridor of Midtown and Uptown Phoenix now standing as the latest, and largest, example.
