Housing price stats are often given through a “median price.” A median price is that which is right in the middle, so that half of the homes sold were priced more and the other half less. But they can be distorted by sales of homes at the fringes of the market – by the amount of either higher-priced home sales or lower priced sales in the analyzed time frame. And when a market area is large like the metro Phoenix area, a median price won’t tell you much about what you want to know – how the median number applies to your specific area or price range. As a result, median calculations are useful only to compare relative price movements over time.
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