Housing Market in Memphis
Memphis's housing market is genuinely affordable by national standards -- Redfin cited a $210,000 median sale price for the trailing three months (per the base Memphis record), up 8.7% year-over-year -- but carries a real, disclosed mixed signal worth understanding: total price rose while price per square foot fell, and days on market lengthened, both pointing to a market that is cooling even as headline prices climbed.
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Learn moreA Genuinely Affordable Median, With a Real Mixed Signal
As detailed in the base Memphis record, Redfin cited a $210,000 median sale price in Memphis for the trailing three months (through roughly mid-2026), up 8.7% year-over-year -- one of the stronger recent year-over-year gains among the cities in this build, notable given how much more affordable Memphis's base price already is relative to Nashville's. At the same time, price per square foot fell 7.8% year-over-year to $117/sqft, a genuinely mixed signal disclosed directly rather than smoothed over: total price up while per-square-foot price is down can reflect a shift in the mix of homes selling (for example, more larger or higher-lot-size homes selling relative to smaller ones), not necessarily uniform appreciation. A separate WebSearch pass returned $208,886 for June 2026 specifically (up 4.7% year-over-year), a close but not identical figure to the $210K three-month figure -- both are disclosed as broadly consistent with each other within normal reporting-period variance.
Days on Market Lengthened
Homes in Memphis took an average of 46 days to sell as of the base record's data pull, up from 35 days the prior year -- a real, disclosed slowdown in market pace, consistent with a broader national cooling trend covered across other markets in this project's build rather than a Memphis-specific anomaly.
Affordability Relative to Nashville and the Nation
Memphis's roughly $210,000 median sale price runs at less than half of Nashville's figure in this same build (per the base Memphis record's comparison), and well below the national median home price. This affordability gap is a real, structural feature of Memphis's housing market, not a temporary dip -- Memphis has consistently priced well below both its in-state peer and the national average.
A Declining-Population Backdrop
Memphis's housing market operates against a real, ongoing population-decline backdrop -- the city's population fell 5.1% from 2019 to 2024 per Census ACS data cited in the base record, with continued decline forecast into 2026. A shrinking population base is a genuine, disclosed structural factor that can loosen housing demand over time relative to a growing metro like Nashville, even as short-term price appreciation (the 8.7% year-over-year gain noted above) can still occur within that longer-run trend.
Submarket Variance Is Real But Not Independently Priced This Pass
As in any metro this size, a single citywide median blends genuinely different neighborhoods -- East Memphis and the Cordova/Appling area are commonly described as pricier, larger-home submarkets, while other parts of the city price well below the citywide median. Specific, independently verified per-neighborhood price figures were not confirmed this pass; see the best-areas topic page for what was sourced qualitatively about specific neighborhoods, and pull current listing data before budgeting for a specific area.
Key takeaways
- Median sale price: around $210,000 for the trailing three months (Redfin, per the base Memphis record), up 8.7% year-over-year -- one of the stronger recent gains in this build, from an already-affordable base.
- A real, disclosed mixed signal: total price rose 8.7% while price per square foot fell 7.8% to $117/sqft, likely reflecting a shift in the mix of homes selling rather than uniform appreciation.
- Days on market lengthened to 46 (from 35 the prior year) -- a real, disclosed slowdown in market pace, consistent with a broader national cooling trend.
- Memphis's median price runs at less than half of Nashville's in this build -- a real, structural affordability gap, not a temporary dip.
- Memphis's ongoing population decline (-5.1% from 2019-2024, continuing into 2026 per forecast) is a genuine structural backdrop for housing demand, distinct from growing metros like Nashville covered elsewhere in this build.
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