Rochester NY Median Home Price: Prices and Historical Trends

If you are moving to Rochester NY from downstate, the first number you need is not a mortgage rate. It is the honest gap between what a house costs where you are and what one costs here. This post lays out the settled Monroe County history first, then the most recent sourced snapshots for the state, the metro and the city, and the Monroe County listing figure. It also explains why the county number you found online may not mean what you think it means, and what to do about that before you write an offer.

Historical Monroe County median sale prices

These are the figures I am willing to put in writing, because the years behind them are settled. Both come from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Real Property Tax Services, which publishes a county median sale price table built from the RP-5217 real property transfer report filed on every sale in the state.

Geography	Calendar year	Median sale price	Source
Monroe County, New York	2023	$230,000	NYS ORPTS
Monroe County, New York	2024	$250,000	NYS ORPTS

2023 compared with 2024

Between those two calendar years the Monroe County median rose from $230,000 to $250,000, an increase of about 8.7 percent. That change is worth stating only because both figures come from the same table, from the same publisher, at the same vintage. Take the same two years from a different publisher and you get a different change, because the two sources do not count the same sales. If you ever see a year over year percentage built from two different sources, discard it.

What this metric actually measures

The definition matters more than the number, and four parts of it are easy to miss:

• Arm's length sales only. Sales between relatives or neighbours, estate sales, foreclosures, auctions, divorce settlements and transfers to a trust are excluded. Buyer and seller certify this on the transfer form, not the agents.
• Condominiums are excluded. The table is built from sales coded non-condominium, so it does not describe the whole housing market.
• County, not city, not metro. Monroe County is not the City of Rochester, and neither one is the Rochester metro area. Three geographies, three different numbers, routinely mixed up online.
• The recorded price can include personal property. The transfer form captures money and other things of value. Personal property is recorded separately but is not subtracted from the published sale price.

Why 2025 is not in that table

Because it is not finished. Sales reach the state on each municipality's own transmittal schedule, monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly. Seven archived editions of this table tell the same story: the newest year's statewide total has come in six to seven percent below its own matured value in every year of the record, without exception. Both Monroe figures above were themselves revised upward after they were first published. So the newest column is a year still filling in, not a finished one. The 2025 figure goes here when a later edition settles it, and not before.

What is the New York State median home price?

That figure moves every month, so it only means something with a date attached. The most recent statewide reading sourced on this page is a snapshot of its period, not a running total: the statewide median sale price was $553,268 in June 2026, up 7.4% year over year, according to Redfin’s New York state market page. That same month, 10,253 homes sold across the state, down 3.5% from 10,628 a year earlier. Homes for sale were up 2.7% year over year, and the median time on market was 36 days, one day longer than the year before.

Read those four figures together and you get a state where prices are still climbing while sales volume softens slightly and inventory ticks up. That is a mild cooling signal, not a correction. It matters for your move because it tells you the equity in your current home is unlikely to evaporate while you shop up here.

Rochester compared with New York State: reading the figures honestly

The gap is large. It is also the single easiest thing on this subject to get wrong, because the statewide figure and the Rochester figure almost never come from the same publisher, the same period or the same definition. Here is every figure I can source, each with the period it covers and what it actually measures. Read down the Period column before you compare any two rows.

Figure	Amount	Period	What it measures
New York state	$553,268	June 2026	Median sale price (Redfin)
Monroe County	$319,900	May 2026	Median listing price (Realtor.com series via FRED)
Rochester metro area	$252,800	Q1 2026	Median sale price (NAR, via Rochester Business Journal)
City of Rochester	$181,000	Close of Q2 2026	Median sale price (GRAR, via Rochester Beacon)

Each row is a snapshot of the period named. These rows are not updated monthly, and figures from different publishers should not be subtracted from one another.

The metro figure is the one most relocation buyers should anchor to, because most of my buyers end up in the suburbs and outlying towns rather than inside the city line. That $252,800 was up 7.2% year over year and ranked as the tenth largest increase among the 235 largest US markets. The Rochester Business Journal noted that the first quarter is seasonally the weakest for prices, which makes the increase more notable, not less.

You will notice there is no single percentage here for the Rochester versus New York State gap. That is deliberate. Subtracting one publisher’s statewide median from another publisher’s metro median, measured in a different quarter, produces a number that looks precise and is not. The one publication that prints a New York State median and a Monroe County median in the same table at the same vintage is copyright restricted and cannot be reproduced here without written permission. What the table does support is the shape of it: homes in the Rochester area trade at roughly half the statewide figure, which is why sale proceeds from Brooklyn, Westchester, Nassau or Suffolk go a long way in Monroe County.

How median home prices work

A median is the middle. Line every sale up by price and the median is the one in the centre, so half sold for more and half sold for less. That is different from an average, which a single large sale can drag upward, and it is why a thin market can show a median and an average tens of thousands of dollars apart.

A median also tells you nothing about any particular house. It moves when the mix of what sold changes, not only when prices change. A quarter with more large suburban closings and fewer small city ones prints a higher median even if no individual house changed value. That is why a median is a useful benchmark and a poor budget.

Why do Monroe County price figures differ by source?

Because the sites you are reading are measuring four different things and calling them all "price." Each publisher counts a different set of sales, and the spread between them is not small.

• Median sale price is what buyers actually paid at closing. That is the number you want.
• Median listing price is what sellers are asking. The Monroe County figure of $319,900 from May 2026 is a listing price, so it sits above what homes are closing at.
• Home value indexes estimate every home in an area, sold or not. Zillow's index put the average Rochester home value at $252,192 on a page dated June 30, 2026, up 4.3% year over year. That is not a median of sales and should not be compared to one.
• Aggregator pages can be internally contradictory. One national site reported a July 2026 Rochester median of $230,000 alongside a claim that homes sold at 120.57% of asking price with 51 median days on market. Those two figures cannot both describe the same market. A market clearing at twenty percent over ask does not also sit fifty-one days.

Two more traps worth knowing. First, several pages carry a fresh date stamp on stale data. A Redfin page for the town of Rush reads as current but reports August 2025 figures. Second, searching "Monroe County NY housing" surfaces results for the Town of Monroe in Orange County, four hours away. If a page mentions Harriman State Park or Route 17, it is not about us.

So if you have seen a Monroe County median of roughly $308,000 quoted somewhere, treat it as an approximation from an unnamed method until you can see whether it is a sale price, a listing price or an index. The four sourced figures in the table above are the ones I stand behind.

Why Rochester home prices vary by suburb

Henrietta, West Henrietta, Pittsford, Brighton, Mendon, Rush and Honeoye Falls are all within roughly twenty to thirty minutes of downtown Rochester, and they price very differently from one another. Reliable monthly medians at the town level are hard to publish honestly, because these are small markets with single digit monthly sales. Rush is the clearest example.

As of August 27, 2026, Homes.com showed four houses for sale in Rush, listed between $399,900 and $1,298,000. That same source reported a Rush median home price of $294,450 and an average sale price of $385,761 as of February 2026, with homes averaging 31 days listed. The $91,000 gap between the median and the average is what a thin, skewed sample looks like. One large sale moves the average and tells you nothing about the house you want.

The practical lesson for a relocating buyer: do not budget off a town level median. Budget off the specific inventory in your price band, in the specific town, in the week you are shopping. In a town with four active listings, the median is a statistic, not a plan.

Cost of living Rochester vs New York City: what I can and cannot tell you

I am not going to hand you a cost of living index I have not verified. What I can give you is the housing cost data. In 2024, 50.9% of City of Rochester renters were cost burdened, along with 24.7% of homeowners, according to Census Bureau figures reported by the Rochester Beacon in July 2026. Both are down from 57.9% and 25.8% in 2015, but they still represent more than 38,000 households.

That figure is worth sitting with. Lower prices do not automatically mean an easy monthly payment. Property taxes in Monroe County are a meaningful line item, and they vary by town and school district, so you need the actual tax bill on the actual parcel before you decide what you can carry. I pull that for every property my clients look at.

What buyers should know

1. Get a written net sheet on your current home so you know your real proceeds, not your Zestimate.
2. Get pre-approved with a lender licensed in New York before you tour. Sellers here ask.
3. Pick a target monthly payment first, then work backward to a price, using the specific property tax bill rather than a county average.
4. Budget separately for closing costs, which in New York include an attorney. Both sides use one here, which surprises buyers coming from states that do not.
5. Assume you will move faster than you did downstate. Statewide median time on market was 36 days in June 2026, and small town inventory can be four listings deep.
6. Set aside a repair reserve. A lot of the housing stock in these towns predates 1980, and inspections turn up real items.

What sellers should know

A county or state median is not a pricing strategy. Buyers do not shop a county, they shop a price band in a school district on a particular street, and the comparable sales that set your number are the closed sales nearest your house in size, age, condition and location. A rising county median is useful context for a listing conversation and nothing more than that.

Two things move a Rochester sale more than the headline median does. The first is the condition and completeness of the house against the other homes competing in the same band that week. The second is the tax line, because the monthly payment a buyer can carry is set by principal, interest, taxes and insurance together, and in Monroe County the tax component is large enough to decide whether your house clears a buyer’s budget at all.

Related market resources

• the Rochester NY housing market: prices, inventory and trends
• the complete Rochester buyer guide, step by step
• how Monroe County property taxes differ town by town
• how much house you can afford in Rochester NY
• town pages for Pittsford, Brighton and Penfield

Common questions

Is the New York State median a useful benchmark for a Rochester budget?

No, and that is the main thing to understand about it. The statewide median is pulled upward heavily by New York City and the downstate suburbs. Redfin’s June 2026 statewide figure in the table above is accurate for what it measures, but it describes a market you are not buying in. Use the metro, county or town level figures for your budget.

Is a median home price a sale price or a listing price?

It depends entirely on who published it, and the two are routinely confused. A median sale price is what buyers actually paid at closing. A median listing price is what sellers are asking, and it sits above what homes close at. The Monroe County figure of $319,900 in the table above is a listing price, which is exactly why it looks higher than the metro sale figure. Before you use any median anywhere, find out which of the two it is.

Why is the City of Rochester median so much lower than the metro median?

The city median sale price was $181,000 at the close of the second quarter of 2026, per GRAR data reported by the Rochester Beacon, against a metro median of $252,800 in the first quarter. The city has a different housing stock, older and smaller on average, and the metro figure includes the suburbs and outlying towns. They are two different markets inside one region.

Are Rochester area prices still rising?

The most recent settled data I have says yes. The Rochester metro median sale price rose 7.2% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, the tenth largest increase among the 235 largest US markets. The city median has climbed from roughly $102,000 in 2018 to $148,000 in 2024 and then to $181,000 by mid 2026. Newer quarterly data may change that picture, so ask for the current figure when you start looking.

How long should I expect my house hunt to take here?

Plan for the search itself to take longer than the transaction. Statewide, the median home sat 36 days in June 2026, and Rush homes averaged 31 days listed as of February 2026. The constraint for most relocation buyers is not speed of sale, it is how few homes match their criteria at any one time in a small town.

Should I buy before I sell downstate?

It depends on your financing and your tolerance for carrying two payments. Some buyers rent here for a few months to learn the towns before committing, which is a reasonable move if you have never spent a winter in Monroe County. Talk it through with a lender and an attorney before you list.

If you are working out what your downstate proceeds buy in Henrietta, Pittsford, Brighton, Mendon, Rush or Honeoye Falls, I will run the numbers on real properties with real tax bills, and tell you plainly where the figures online are wrong. Book a time with me here and bring your questions.

Khem Kadariya

Sources and methodology

The historical Monroe County medians above come from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Real Property Tax Services county median sale price table: the median sale price of arm’s length, non-condominium residential sales, by calendar year, for Monroe County. ORPTS revises that table as municipalities transmit their sales files, and both figures shown have already been revised once since they were first published.

The figures in the comparison table are attributed in the table itself, each with the period it covers: Redfin for the New York State median sale price, the Realtor.com series via FRED for the Monroe County median listing price, National Association of REALTORS data reported by the Rochester Business Journal for the metro median sale price, and Greater Rochester Association of REALTORS data reported by the Rochester Beacon for the City of Rochester median sale price. Those are four different publishers measuring four different things, and they are not interchangeable.

No figure on this page is an MLS statistic calculated by me, and none of them is an estimate. Market numbers change, and a dated figure is a snapshot of its period rather than a current reading. For the current number on a specific home, street or town, ask me directly rather than relying on a published average. Updated October 6, 2026.

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