Typical U.S. Home Sellers Gained $39,900 Last Year. See How They Did in Your Market.
Homeowners who sold their homes in 2016 gained (the difference between what they bought it for and what they sold it for), at the median, $39,900 – or a return of 3.4 percent a year. That’s the highest gain for home sellers since 2007, when the typical gain was $47,500. In general, people who sold homes in 2016 owned them for seven years and five months at the mid-point – the longest period in decades.
In some pricey coastal markets – such as San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles – the typical seller made upward of $200,000 on the sale, in part by holding onto their homes much longer than the national average and enjoying several years of very robust appreciation. Typical San Jose sellers, for example, sold their homes in 2016 after owning them for just under a decade.
Among the top 100 cities, San Francisco home sellers saw the largest annualized return, an eye-popping 14.6 percent, while 2016 home sellers in San Bernardino, Calif., realized a 10.4 percent annual return, on average. Home sellers in Tampa, Denver, San Jose, Portland, Ore., Santa Ana, Calif., and Hialeah, Fla., also saw annual returns in excess of 9 percent a year over the time they owned their homes. Owners who sold in 2016 in five of these eight cities also held onto their homes longer than the national average.
At the other end, owners who sold in Baltimore and Memphis saw the smallest total and annualized returns — $5,000 (0.9 percent average annual return) and $6,800 (1.0 percent average annual return), respectively. They also had some of the shortest holding periods: Baltimore sellers sold after owning their homes on average for only three years and five months.
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