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Some of the country’s pandemic boom markets are getting hit from both sides: home prices are falling, but the cost of owning those homes keeps climbing.
Last year, the U.S. saw record-high home prices that have since begun to moderate, bringing the housing market more into balance, according to some economists. But in parts of the Sun Belt, where the pandemic-era buying frenzy sent values soaring, homeowners are now feeling another delayed effect as local governments and insurers catch up to those peak prices.
The affordability squeeze is more apparent in Tampa, where the median sales price fell nearly 4 percent year over year in 2025 to more than $355,000, according to data from research firm Attom. That was the steepest annual drop among the country’s most populous metro areas. At the same time, Tampa’s effective tax rate soared 13 percent, the ninth-highest increase.
Tampa also recorded the country’s second-highest increase in monthly homeownership costs from 2023 to 2024, at 12.2 percent, according to an analysis by the National Association of Realtors.
“Buyers may expect affordability conditions to improve, because prices are no longer rising rapidly in these areas,” said Nadia Evangelou, principal economist at NAR. “But when you look at the actual monthly cost of owning a home, the story is different.”
TRD Data’s analysis focused on metro areas with populations of at least 1 million residents, looking at effective tax rates (a market’s average yearly property tax expressed as a percentage of homes’ average estimated market values) and sale information from Attom and homeownership costs, for owners with mortgages, from NAR.
Nationwide, the effective tax rate rose about 4.7 percent year over year, per Attom’s figures. The median sales price also climbed, but at a slower rate of 2.6 percent, as price growth tapered toward the end of the year. Meanwhile, from 2019 to 2024, the median monthly cost of owning a home in the U.S. soared 27 percent.
There are several reasons why Tampa, and Florida generally, may have seen their effective tax rates climb in 2025, said Brad Hunter, president of Hunter Housing Economics who is based in West Palm Beach.
In 2024, voters in Hillsborough County, where Tampa sits, approved a tax to fund school programs and salaries. Additionally, the Covid-era buying spree that sent home values soaring is also triggering another delayed effect, as tax assessors are finally baking those peak figures into current tax bills.
“The assessed values may be going up at the same time that the actual market values are going down, and that’s creating that stress,” he said.
Finally, Florida has the Save Our Homes Act, which caps property taxes for qualified homeowners with a homestead exemption. The cap goes away once a property trades, which can also lead to bigger tax hikes, Hunter said.
“All of these things are conspiring together to make it very difficult, for especially young families, to be able to afford to buy a home,” Hunter said.
Tucson, Arizona, was another Sun Belt market that followed this pattern. The median sales price dropped about 2.8 percent year over year in 2025 — the second-largest decline. Meanwhile, the effective tax rate rose by 12 percent. Still, the metro’s tax rate of 0.74 percent is the 11th-lowest among the top metros analyzed.
Cathy Erchull, a Tucson-area realtor, said she has noticed that prices are climbing across many elements of homeownership, from insurance to utilities to water.
“We are seeing a little bit of the buyers focusing on the total monthly cost of owning homes,” she said.
Tucson’s median monthly ownership costs grew by 11 percent from 2013 to 2024 — one of the highest among the metro areas TRD Data analyzed — with insurance costs climbing about 18 percent, according to NAR’s analysis. However, its median property taxes climbed by 2 percent over the same period, which Evangelou did not consider significant.
Over in Texas, whose markets have long been in flux because of housing oversupply, Houston was a third market whose effective tax rate climbed by double digits — 14 percent — yet its median sale price dropped in 2025 compared to the year before. However, the drop was minimal, just 0.6 percent.
Still, Houston homebuyers are likely feeling the strain on their wallets; Houston’s median ownership cost climbed by 11.7 percent from 2023 to 2024. That was the fourth-highest among the metros studied by TRD Data.