What’s the median price of a home in the Triangle? It depends on who you ask

There’s no question that home prices across the Triangle are accelerating.

But by how much are they climbing each month?

You’ll find different answers depending on where you look, because the data can be volatile, given real estate can be impacted by so many things, like the start of the school year or even how many rainy days there happened to be one month.

What is the current median home price in Wake County?

You can find multiple answers to this question, depending on your source. But the answer, for the month of September, pegs it around $400,000.

Real estate watchers usually use median prices when looking at a market rather than an average. A median, unlike an average, is less susceptible to outlier prices on either ends. That’s because a median is found by finding the exact middle of a data set, where half of the numbers in the set are larger and half are smaller.

An average, on the other hand, is found by adding all of the numbers, then dividing them by the total by number of transactions in the data set. That can give outliers, like a home that sold for $10,000 or $5 million, more influence.

So what is the range of median prices?

Here’s where a variety of data providers place Wake County’s median sales price in September:

Realtor.com: $416,000

Triangle Multiple Listing Services: $410,000

Wake County Tax Administrator: $395,000

Wake County Register of Deeds: $390,000

Zillow, one of the most popular real estate sites, doesn’t provide median sales prices for counties. Instead, it provides something called a Zillow Home Value Index, which uses an algorithm to try to take into account momentum in the market. Zillow’s Home Value Index for Wake County was $409,080 for the month of September, but Zillow has gotten out of the house-flipping business because, it said, its algorithm was off.

Where do they get their data?

Stacey Anfindsen, a Cary-based real estate appraiser and the author of the Triangle Area Residential Report, said the services all use different data.

Zillow and Realtor.com rely on when public records are filed by local governments and agencies, perhaps causing slight delays in when some sales are added.

The Triangle MLS figure is based on closed listings reported to the multiple listing system, which most real estate agents depend on to get up-to-date information about what is for sale in the region. But it requires the cooperation of agents and brokers to list prices accurately and on time.

Wake County’s Register of Deeds’ number includes all real estate sold in the county, so it includes things like empty lots and apartments.

“We leave out Right of Ways, Easements, Deed of Easement, etc.,” Luther Snyder, deputy director of the register of deeds, said in an email. “Deeds and Quit Claim Deeds are more true representation of property ownership changing hands for a price between parties and they make up the overwhelming majority of the transfers.”

“The (Register of Deeds) doesn’t track specifically ‘home’ or dwelling prices,” Snyder added.

Is the tax department the most accurate counter?

Snyder said county tax administrators track homes more closely. “They get that specific because they administer the tax collection on property/homes, etc.,” he said.

Marcus Kinrade, the tax administrator for Wake County, said his office is much stricter on what it includes in its data.

“(The Register of Deeds) simply converts the deed stamp on all deeds recorded to a sale price. The property transaction could be for raw land, an unimproved lot, or a package (lot and home),” Kinrade said in an email. “But the exchange could also be a non-market transaction such as a foreclosure or sale between related parties and they really wouldn’t know.”

“We wouldn’t consider those a market sale,” he said.

Kinrade said his office puts the median sales price for the month of September at $395,000.