I was curious as to how much home prices were increasing between last year and this year, year to date. Since average prices can be thrown off by heavy or lightweight pricing, I used the median pricing approach.

The median price is the middle point for real estate prices. It is not the same as the average price. The median price is the price in the very middle of a data set, with exactly half of the houses priced for less and half-priced for more.

The median price for all the houses sold in Pike last year was $145,000. This year, year to date is $160,000. That is a 10.34 percent increase.

What happens when you break it down into 4 different price tiers? The four price tiers are based on the median sale price and are as follows: homes priced at 75% or less of the median (low price), homes priced between 75% and 100% of the median (low-to-middle price), homes priced between 100% and 125% of the median (middle-to-moderate price) and homes priced greater than 125% of the median (high Price). The number of houses sold is in parentheses.

Now if I take the median price of each tier and compare 2018 to 2019YTD I get the following;

Interesting, I would have thought that the biggest increases would have been in the middle tiers. Turns out that the low tier and high tier had the biggest increases.