Here's how much a house could cost in 2030 — and how to start saving for it

Over the last few years, rising home prices have disillusioned many aspiring homebuyers. According to a report by Realtor.com, the cost of financing a home increased by almost $630 a month between 2022 and 2023.

If homes are that expensive now, how much will they cost in the future?

According to a 2020 report from RenoFi, a single-family home in the U.S. could reach $382,000 by 2030. Depending on where you live, that's small potatoes: The median home sale price in New York City in November 2025 was $551,000, according to Redfin. In Albany, however, it was just $305,000.

RenoFi's forecasts that homes in San Francisco will average $2,61 million in 2030, the highest in the U.S. (Of course, a home's value doesn't always equal the price it sells for.) Here are the top 10 metropolitan markets in RenoFi's report.

Don't Quit Your Day Job, a website providing investment resources, used housing price index data from Yale economist Robert Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency to find the median value of existing homes in the U.S.

• In September 1996, the median price was $112,230.80 ($213,963.97, adjusted for inflation)
• In September 2006, the median price was $215,734.57 ($319,869.82, adjusted for inflation)
• In September 2016, the median price was $224,817.22 ($280,141.54, adjusted for inflation)
• In September 2021, the median price was $343,122.34 ($376,307.55, adjusted for inflation)
• In September 2022, the median price was $381,471.31 ($386,653.42, adjusted for inflation)

Experts predict this number will keep rising.

"These are hefty price increases," Realtor chief economist Danielle Hale told CNBC Select in 2021. "We see this because sellers ask for one price, buyers make an offer, and the home usually sells for another price. [In 2021], we saw the sale price come in above the asking price in many places."

This was at a time of super-low interest rates and increased demand. But even during normal times, home prices continue to increase — as we can see by looking at home prices from 1996 to 2006 to 2016 and from 2021 to 2022.

Supply and demand and interest rates certainly affect home prices, but according to Hale, an increase in wages can also be a contributing factor.

"In a normal economy, we see home prices increase roughly on par with wage increases, because the majority of homebuyers are using wage income to buy their homes," she explains. "Even though incomes are rising, home prices are rising even faster."

According to data from the Social Security Administration, the average U.S. wage increased from $24,859.17 in 1996 to $51,916.27 in 2019. Thanks to inflation and rising costs of living, though, a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to.

Though looking at future home values can make homebuying feel like a pipe dream, aspiring homeowners should take steps toward purchasing the house they want.

"The key is for young people to start saving as soon as they can," Hale says. "The earlier you start, the more money you may accumulate and the bigger your potential down payment will be. Be consistent about it."

If you don't plan to buy a home for another five to ten years, consider investing the money you're saving for a down payment so that it's more likely to grow faster than inflation.

Index funds are a low-cost way to invest and some funds, like those tied to the S&P 500, have a history of yielding an average return of 10% annually. (Past returns do not guarantee future performance, of course.) You can open an account with a brokerage like Fidelity or Charles Schwab.

If you want something a little more hands-off, consider robo-advisors like Wealthfront and Betterment, which automatically invest and rebalance your money based on preferences like risk tolerance and when you want to make withdrawals, so you're not taking on too much risk.

Only invest the money you're saving for a down payment if you have longer time horizon. If you're looking to buy a house sooner, you'd be better off with a high-yield savings account (HYSA), like the LendingClub High-Yield Savings or the UFB Preferred Savings account.

That way, you're guaranteed to earn a return and avoid the volatility of the market.

You can use RenoFi's projections to estimate how much you'll need to buy a home in your desired state or city in the next 10 years. You can do rough calculations to determine the down payment and how much you need to put away each month.

If you want to buy a $400,000 home in about seven years, here's how it would break down:

• If you're saving for a 10% down payment ($40,000) and you're putting the money into a high-yield savings account with a 5% APY, you need to save roughly $401 a month.
  
• If you're saving for a 20% down payment ($80,000) and you're putting the money into a high-yield savings account with a 5% APY, you need to save roughly $801 a month.
  
• If you're saving for a 10% down payment ($40,000) and you're putting the money in an investment account with an estimated 10% year-over-year return, you need to save roughly $337 a month.
  
• If you're saving for a 20% down payment ($80,000) and you're putting the money in an investment account with an estimated 10% year-over-year return, you need to save roughly $673 a month.

Remember, you can begin slowly and ramp up as you earn more. You can also add any extra cash that comes your way, such as tax refunds, inheritances and year-end bonuses.

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Disclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Ventures are investors in Acorns.