Q3 Home Seller Profit Margins Down Slightly

Homeowners earned a 55.6% profit margin on typical single-family home and condo sales during the third quarter, according to new data from ATTOM. This represented a one percentage point dip from the second quarter and a two point-drop from the third quarter of last year.

Typical profit margins – the percent difference between median purchase and resale prices – stayed the same or decreased from the second quarter to the third quarter in 79 (50.6%) of the 156 metropolitan statistical areas with sufficient data to analyze. They were down annually in 112, or 71.8%, of those metros, and down in about the same portion since the second quarter of 2022, when the nationwide return on median-priced home sales peaked at 64.3%. ATTOM put the national median home value at about $360,000.

The biggest year-over-year decreases in typical profit margins during the third quarter came in the San Francisco metro areas (margin down from 84.9% in the third quarter of 2023 to 61.4% in the third quarter of 2024), Punta Gorda, Florida (down from 94.1% to 74.4%), and Scranton, Pennsylvania (down from 88.2% to 69.6%).

Homeowners who sold in the third quarter had owned their homes an average of 8.09 years, up from 7.82 years in the second quarter of 2024 and from 7.74 years in the third quarter of 2023, marking the fifth increase in the last six quarters.

“The latest price and profit numbers provided another round of generally good news for homeowners, tempered by a bit of a downside,” said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM. “Home values remained at or near record levels around large swaths of the country, keeping seller profits far above historical levels. At the same time, though, the housing market settled down after a big second quarter, which extended a slow fallback in profit margins that started last year. If history is a good guide, the fourth quarter is likely to bring more of the same as the peak buying season ends.”