WASHINGTON, DC — Starter homes have not disappeared from the U.S. housing market, but they are harder to find than they were before the pandemic. Realtor.com’s latest analysis shows the national share of starter homes slipped from 38.1% of active inventory in August 2019 to 36.2% in August 2026.
At the same time, starter-home prices climbed sharply. Realtor.com said the typical price for that segment rose 30.8% over the same period, from about $260,000 to about $340,000. The firm defines starter homes as properties priced at roughly 80% of a metro area’s median list price.
Why condos are playing a bigger role in entry-level housing
The mix of homes available to first-time buyers has also changed. Before the pandemic, starter-home inventory was still dominated by single-family houses, but condos now make up a larger share of the entry-level market in many places.
Realtor.com said condos represented 18% of starter-price inventory nationwide in August 2019. That share rose to 20% in 2022 and reached 27.1% by August 2026, including condos and town homes.
That shift matters because smaller attached homes often provide one of the few lower-priced paths into ownership when detached houses move out of reach. Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones said the market now has more than 21,000 fewer starter-priced homes than it would have if the 2019 share had held steady.
Boise and several other metros posted the biggest gains
The national picture is mixed, but several major metro areas have improved for buyers looking for starter homes. Boise, Idaho, posted the largest gain among the 100 biggest U.S. metros, with its share of starter homes rising 4.7% from August 2019 to August 2026.
Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, followed with a 4% gain. Des Moines, Iowa, ranked next at 3.7%, while San Jose, California, showed a 2.9% increase and Denver, Colorado, recorded a 2.5% gain.
Those increases do not mean these markets are easy, but they do show that some large cities and their surrounding areas have preserved a somewhat better entry-level supply than the country as a whole. For buyers, that can translate into more options in the lower-priced part of the market.
Sun Belt metros saw some of the steepest drops
Other fast-growing parts of the country have moved in the opposite direction. Realtor.com said several Sun Belt metros still have not regained the amount of starter-home inventory they had before the pandemic.
Columbia, South Carolina, had the largest decline in the country, with its starter-home share falling 8.3% from 2019 to 2026. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, followed with a 7.5% drop, while Cape Coral and Fort Myers, Florida, fell 6.9%.
Augusta, the combined Georgia and South Carolina metro, saw a 6.5% decline. Fresno, California, also ranked among the biggest losers, down 6%, matching the drop in Greensboro and High Point, North Carolina.
What the national numbers say about first-time buyers
The analysis points to a housing market where affordability pressure is still very real, even if pockets of opportunity remain. A smaller share of starter homes means buyers competing for entry-level properties are chasing a thinner slice of listings.
At the same time, the rise in prices from about $260,000 to about $340,000 suggests the lower end of the market has not been sheltered from broader housing inflation. For households trying to buy their first home, that can mean a bigger down payment and a higher monthly payment than a few years ago.
Realtor.com’s findings also show that the starter-home challenge is not uniform. Some cities have seen supply improve, while others have seen the available share shrink sharply, especially across the South.
How Realtor.com defines a starter home
Realtor.com’s analysis uses a market-by-market definition rather than a single national price cap. In each metro, it counts homes priced at about 80% of that area’s median list price as starter homes.
That method helps account for differences in local housing costs. A starter home in one city may cost far more than a starter home somewhere else, but it still sits near the affordable end of that market.
The company’s numbers also track active inventory, which shows what buyers can actually choose from at a given moment. That makes the findings useful for understanding supply, not just home prices, and it explains why shifts in condo inventory matter so much for entry-level buyers.
More on what homes, rents and new builds are doing near you, on RHS Commoner.
