Your home didn’t just get more expensive. It got more valuable.

Most market updates look back a few months. We looked back ten years — and adjusted every number for inflation, so you can see what your home actually gained.

R·House Realty  |  Analysis of Cromford Report data, August 12, 2026

If you own a home, you’ve probably noticed that market news is confusing. One month prices are up. The next month they’re down. None of it tells you much about the house you actually live in.

So this month we did something different. Instead of looking at the last few months, we looked at the last seven and ten years — and we adjusted every figure for inflation.

That second part is what makes this worth reading.

What “after inflation” actually means

Everything costs more than it did in 2016. Groceries, gas, a car, a gallon of paint. So a price from 2016 and a price from 2026 aren’t really measured in the same money.

Adjusting for inflation puts both numbers in today’s dollars, so you’re comparing like with like.

This matters because it’s the difference between a number that looks good and a number that is good. Both are below.

Why this report sorts homes by size, not by price

Most market reports group homes into price ranges. Over a long stretch of time, that quietly breaks.

Here’s why. A home that sold for $300,000 in 2016 might sell for $600,000 today. It moved into a completely different price category without changing at all. Follow price ranges over ten years and you end up tracking the categories, not the houses.

Size doesn’t do that. A 1,900 square foot home is still 1,900 square feet ten years later. So grouping by size gives a much fairer picture over a long period.

These figures also use the median price per square foot rather than the sale price. It’s a steadier measure, because it doesn’t swing just because bigger or smaller homes happened to sell that month.

Every size of home is ahead of inflation over ten years

This is the number that matters most if you already own your home. Find your size in the left column.

Change in median price per square foot, Greater Phoenix single-family detached homes, adjusted for inflation and expressed in June 2026 dollars. Rankings compare the seven size groups against each other.

Every single number in that table is positive. That’s the headline.

That’s real, spendable value — not a bigger number that inflation ate. And it held true for every size group, top to bottom.

On paper, the gains look even larger

These are the same homes over the same periods, without the inflation adjustment. This is what the price tags actually did.

Same measure, not adjusted for inflation. Most homes more than doubled in price over the ten-year period.

Most homes more than doubled on paper since 2016. The inflation-adjusted table above is the more honest read — but both are true, and the gap between them is simply how much the dollar changed.

Why the recent numbers look different

If you’ve felt like the market has been flat or sliding since 2022, you’re not imagining it. But the reason matters.

2022 was the top of a frenzy. Homes were getting dozens of offers. When you measure from the highest point a market has ever reached, almost everything after it looks like a decline — by definition, not by weakness.

It’s worth remembering who was buying in the first half of 2022, too. A large share of purchases in those months were made by iBuyers and institutional investors rather than ordinary families, who could barely get an offer accepted.

Here’s what has happened since that peak, after inflation:

Notice the difference between the two columns. On paper, most homes are close to flat since 2022. The larger declines only appear once you adjust for inflation — which is another way of saying the dollar moved more than the house did.

Put the two views together and the picture is straightforward: a soft four years inside a very strong decade.

Larger homes have held up best

One clear pattern runs through every period we looked at: bigger homes appreciated more.

Homes between 6,001 and 10,000 square feet finished first in every single measurement — ten years, seven years, and since 2022.

• Since 2016: up 142.7% on paper, and still up 68.7% after inflation.
• Since 2019: up 120.3% on paper, and up 65.4% after inflation.
• Since 2022: up 32.4% on paper, and up 15.6% after inflation — the only group with a meaningful real gain since the peak.

Homes between 4,001 and 6,000 square feet came second over both long periods, and were the only other group to stay positive after inflation since 2022.

Homes over 10,000 square feet did not keep pace with the two groups below them. That said, very few homes that large change hands in any given year, so those figures move around more than the rest of the table and are worth treating as a rough indication rather than a firm trend.

Smaller homes have become genuinely more affordable

The same numbers that look soft for a seller look quite different from the other side.

Homes under 2,000 square feet are down roughly 16% to 17% after inflation since 2022. Over that same stretch, Cromford reports that median incomes have grown substantially.

Put those together and buying power at the entry level has improved in a real way compared with the peak — particularly for anyone who was priced out during the 2021 and 2022 scramble.

What these numbers do and don’t cover

A few things worth knowing so you can read the tables accurately:

• Single-family detached homes only. Condos, townhomes and similar were left out, because they’ve lost market share over this period and including them would skew the comparison.
• All figures are median price per square foot for Greater Phoenix as a whole — not any one neighborhood, and not your specific home.
• Inflation-adjusted figures are expressed in June 2026 dollars, using the Consumer Price Index.
• All comparisons run August to August, which keeps seasonal differences out of the picture.
• Teardowns can distort things in a couple of areas. In Paradise Valley and Arcadia, roughly 16% to 18% of sales involve knocking a home down and building something far grander in its place. Everywhere else in Greater Phoenix, that’s under 1.3% of sales. Median price per square foot is the measure least affected by this, which is part of why it was used.

What this means for you

If you own your home, the ten-year view is the one that describes your situation. Your home has gained real value — not just a bigger number, but genuine value that outpaced inflation. The last few years have been flat, and that’s normal after a peak like 2022.

If you’re thinking about buying, especially something under 2,000 square feet, your money goes further now than it did at the top of the market.

And if you’re weighing a move, the honest answer is that none of these numbers describe your house specifically. They describe a metro area of several million people. What your home is worth depends on your neighborhood, your size, your condition and your street.