Columbus Home Values Rose 3.3% Over the Year to Mid-2026, Says FHFA

Columbus-area home values rose 3.3 percent over the year ending in the second quarter of 2026, according to the federal government's all-transactions house price index, slightly faster than the 3.0 percent national gain. The index has climbed every quarter for more than two years.

What the index measures

The number comes from the Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index, a repeat-sales measure that tracks the changing value of the same homes over time rather than the mix of houses that happen to sell in a given quarter. The all-transactions version the agency describes on its House Price Index page adds appraisals from refinances to actual home sales, so it covers more properties than a purchase-only gauge. CREN pulled the Columbus metro and national series from the Federal Reserve's FRED database on October 3, 2026, where both are posted as public-domain federal data.

Columbus edged past the national pace

The Columbus metro index reached 351.14 in the second quarter of 2026, up from 346.10 in the first quarter, a gain of about 1.5 percent in three months. Measured against the second quarter of 2025, when the index stood at 339.78, Columbus home values rose about 3.3 percent over the year. The national all-transactions index rose about 3.0 percent over the same year, from 698.69 to 719.87, so Columbus appreciation ran a little ahead of the country's.

Appreciation has cooled from a year ago

The yearly pace of appreciation has slowed. In the second quarter of 2025, the same Columbus index was about 4.4 percent above its level a year earlier, compared with the 3.3 percent annual gain recorded this quarter. The index has still risen in every quarter CREN examined, from 327.08 in the third quarter of 2024 to 351.14 in the second quarter of 2026, though the increments have been small and steady rather than the sharper jumps of earlier years.

What the number cannot tell you

The index is not a median sale price, and it should not be read as the cost of a typical Columbus house today. It measures repeat transactions and refinance appraisals, it is not adjusted for seasonal swings, and it lags, so the second-quarter reading covers April through June and was published on August 25, 2026. The Columbus and national figures also sit on different base periods, 1995 for the metro series and 1980 for the national one, so the raw index levels cannot be compared directly, only their rates of change. Because both series come from the same agency, they are one measure of prices rather than two independent ones.

When the next reading lands

The FHFA updates the House Price Index every quarter. Its next release is scheduled for November 24, 2026 and will add third-quarter figures covering July through September, the first reading to show how Columbus values moved in the second half of the year. CREN will update this measure when that data posts.