Best Real Estate Markets in Idaho 2026: PropertyIQ Scores for 8 Idaho Metros

Boise spent the first half of the 2020s as one of the most talked-about housing markets in America. Californians and remote workers priced out of the coasts turned it into a national migration story, and for a while the price charts backed up the hype. The PropertyIQ Score for Idaho in 2026 tells a very different story about where that market stands now.

As of June 30, 2026, Boise City scores just 48 out of 100, a Grade F. That ties it for the third-lowest score of the eight Idaho metros PropertyIQ tracks. The highest score in the entire state, by a wide margin, belongs to a market roughly 1/25th Boise's size: Hailey, the small resort town at the foot of Sun Valley, scores 96 out of 100, a Grade A. And Boise is not alone in cooling off. Every one of Idaho's eight tracked metros has seen its score fall over the trailing three months, Hailey included, though Hailey's dip has been marginal while several other markets have fallen by double digits.

Here is the complete breakdown of how PropertyIQ scores the eight Idaho metros as of June 30, 2026.

Idaho PropertyIQ Scores at a Glance

All scores and median home values are as of June 30, 2026. Median price reflects each metro's Zillow-based home value estimate.

Only one market in this dataset, Hailey, is above the 50-point line that represents the Idaho baseline. The other seven metros, including Boise, sit below it, and all seven have gotten worse, not better, over the past quarter.

Hailey: Score 96, the Highest in the State

Hailey scores 96 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade A and easily the strongest score anywhere in Idaho. The median home value here is $1,054,100, by far the most expensive market in the state, and the median Realtor.com listing price runs even higher at $1,299,750 as of June 2026. This is Blaine County, the Sun Valley resort corridor, with a year-round population of just 31,010.

The inputs behind the score are strong across the board: home values up 20.0% year-over-year, a positive 3-month momentum reading, a price-reduced share of only 8.7% (the lowest of the eight metros), and a median 47 days on market. Active inventory is down 19.6% year-over-year to just 230 listings. The score held at 99 for six straight months from September 2025 through February 2026, dipped to the high 80s in April and May, and recovered to 96 in June, a one-point pullback from March that is essentially flat while every other Idaho metro fell sharply.

Blaine County's geography is the reason. A mountain-ringed resort market with little room for new construction and a steady stream of second-home buyers behaves differently than the rest of the state. Median household income here is $81,389 and the homeownership rate is 75.7%, both among the highest in the dataset. At a seven-figure median, this is not a cash-flow market, but the demand signal is the strongest in Idaho.

Coeur d'Alene: Score 55

Coeur d'Alene scores 55 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade F despite being the second-highest score in the state. The median home value is $608,700. The score is down 28 points from 83 in March 2026, one of the sharper three-month declines in the dataset, after peaking at 92 in February.

Home values are still up 6.5% year-over-year, but the price-reduced share has climbed to 16.1% and the median home now sits on the market 44 days. New listings jumped 30.3% year-over-year to 516 while for-sale inventory fell 12.3%, a combination that shows sellers testing the market faster than buyers are absorbing it. The metro's own demand sub-score (71.2) still outpaces its supply sub-score (62.9), which is part of why the composite score, while falling, remains the second best in Idaho.

Coeur d'Alene has drawn steady in-migration to the North Idaho panhandle for years, with population near 177,736 and median household income of $77,034. The February-to-June slide suggests that momentum is losing steam faster than the headline score alone would suggest.

Rexburg: Score 48, the Sharpest Decline in the State

Rexburg scores 48 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade F. The median home value is $447,100. The score is down 43 points from 91 in March 2026, the single largest three-month decline of any Idaho metro in this dataset.

Rexburg is a college town built around BYU-Idaho, and its numbers show it. Median age is just 22.4, the youngest in the dataset by a wide margin, and the homeownership rate is 51.7%, the lowest in the state, consistent with a market dominated by student renters rather than owner-occupants. The price-reduced share has climbed to 21.4%, the highest of the eight metros, and the median home now takes 61 days to sell, also the longest in the dataset. For-sale inventory is up 16.6% year-over-year even as new listings fell 32.7%, a sign that homes already on the market are sitting rather than turning over.

Home values are still up 10.5% year-over-year, but the combination of rising days on market and the steepest price-cut share in Idaho points to a market that ran hot through early 2026 and has since cooled quickly.

Boise City: Score 48, the State's Largest Market

Boise City scores 48 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade F, tied for third-lowest in the state. The median home value is $497,200. The score is down 19 points from 67 in March 2026, and it has declined every single month since peaking at 77 in February 2026.

Boise is Idaho's largest metro by a wide margin, with a population of 790,640, more than four times Coeur d'Alene's, the next-largest market in the dataset. That scale is part of the story. PropertyIQ's underlying demand sub-score for Boise sits at just 32.1, far below Coeur d'Alene's 71.2, the only other Idaho metro where PropertyIQ breaks out separate supply and demand sub-scores, while Boise's own supply sub-score of 78.6 is comparatively strong. For-sale inventory of 2,909 units dwarfs every other Idaho metro, and the pending ratio of 87.1% is the highest in the state, meaning nearly all of that inventory is spoken for, but new supply keeps arriving fast enough to keep the market from tightening further. Zillow's one-year home price forecast for Boise is just 1.3%, the softest outlook of any Idaho metro tracked.

Days on market, at 39, is still the shortest in the dataset, so homes are not sitting unsold. What has changed is the balance between how much is for sale and how much demand is chasing it, and that balance has been shifting against Boise for months.

Burley: Score 43

Burley scores 43 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade F. The median home value is $341,000, the most affordable of the eight Idaho metros. The score is down 9 points from 52 in March 2026, a comparatively modest slide next to Rexburg's 43-point drop or Sandpoint's 37-point drop, though the market's history is volatile, swinging from 33 in December 2025 to 82 the month prior.

Home values are up 6.4% year-over-year with a positive 3-month trend, and the price-reduced share sits at 19.7% on a median 57 days on market. Active inventory of 137 listings is down 8.1% year-over-year. At this price point, the math for investors looks different than elsewhere in the state: PropertyIQ's calculated gross yield here is 5.15% and the cap rate is 3.09%, both among the highest of the eight metros.

Burley sits in Idaho's agricultural south-central region, with median household income of $68,214. The low entry price and above-average yield make it a market to watch for cash-flow-focused buyers, even with a score well below the state's midpoint.

Moscow: Score 43

Moscow scores 43 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade F. The median home value is $480,900. The score is down 31 points from 74 in March 2026, part of an unusually volatile run that saw the score spike from 30 in January to 77 in February before sliding back down.

Moscow is home to the University of Idaho, and like Rexburg, its demographics reflect a college town: median age of 30.7 and a homeownership rate of 60.6%, the second-lowest in the dataset. Active inventory is just 77 listings, the smallest of any Idaho metro, and down 23.9% year-over-year, the steepest inventory contraction in the state. The pending ratio of 68.0% is the third-highest in Idaho, behind only Boise and Mountain Home, meaning what little inventory exists is moving quickly even as the composite score has fallen.

Home values are still up 4.3% year-over-year with a positive 3-month trend. The disconnect between a tight, fast-moving inventory picture and a falling composite score is one of the more unusual patterns in this dataset.

Mountain Home: Score 42

Mountain Home scores 42 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade F. The median home value is $360,900, the second-most affordable in the dataset. The score is down 21 points from 63 in March 2026, part of an especially choppy history that includes a low of 15 in September 2025 and a high of 63 just six months later.

Mountain Home is a small market, population 29,046, the smallest in the Idaho dataset, anchored by Mountain Home Air Force Base. New listings fell 29.6% year-over-year while for-sale inventory has held roughly flat, up just 1.3%. The pending ratio of 80.2% is the second-highest in the state. Median household income of $58,976 is the lowest of the eight metros, and PropertyIQ's calculated gross yield of 5.2% is the highest in Idaho, narrowly ahead of Burley's 5.15%.

Mountain Home's September 2025 reading of 15 is the single lowest monthly score posted by any Idaho metro anywhere in this dataset, a pattern consistent with a small, thin market where a handful of transactions can move the index significantly in either direction.

Sandpoint: Score 42

Sandpoint scores 42 out of 100 as of June 30, 2026, a Grade F, tied for the lowest score in the state. The median home value is $658,100, the second-highest in Idaho behind only Hailey. The score is down 37 points from 79 in March 2026, the second-largest three-month decline of any Idaho metro, after peaking in March and falling for three consecutive months since.

Sandpoint sits on Lake Pend Oreille in the northern Idaho panhandle, another small resort-adjacent market, but its trajectory looks nothing like Hailey's. The pending ratio is just 21.6%, the lowest of the eight Idaho metros, despite for-sale inventory holding roughly flat year-over-year, meaning demand is not keeping pace with what is available. Median age here is 48.2, the oldest in the dataset, and the homeownership rate of 77.65% is the highest of the eight metros, consistent with a retiree-heavy resort community.

Home values are still up 6.5% year-over-year, but the 3-month momentum has turned negative and the price-reduced share sits at 17.4%. Sandpoint is a reminder that not every small, scenic Idaho market performs like Hailey.

What the Idaho Scores Tell You

The most important pattern in this dataset is not any single city's score. It is that every one of Idaho's eight tracked metros has a lower score today than it did three months ago. Boise's headline-grabbing size did not insulate it, even though its 19-point decline is on the milder side of the group, well behind sharper drops in Rexburg (-43), Sandpoint (-37), Moscow (-31), and Coeur d'Alene (-28). This looks like a broad, statewide cooling through the spring and early summer of 2026, not an isolated Boise story.

Size and score also point in opposite directions here. Boise, Idaho's largest metro at 790,640 people, has a demand sub-score of just 32.1, well below Coeur d'Alene's 71.2, the state's second-largest metro and the only other one where PropertyIQ breaks the score into separate supply and demand components. Hailey, with barely 31,000 residents, has the strongest overall score in Idaho, 41 points clear of the next-best market. A geographically constrained resort market with almost no room to add supply is behaving very differently than a large metro that spent years adding both housing and population.

But resort geography alone is not the explanation. Sandpoint and Hailey are the two oldest, most heavily owner-occupied markets in the dataset, Sandpoint's median age of 48.2 and 77.65% homeownership rate are the highest in the state, and Hailey's 43.7 and 75.71% are the second-highest on both measures, yet Sandpoint scores 42, tied for the lowest in the state, and posted the second-steepest three-month decline of any Idaho metro. The two college towns in this dataset, Rexburg and Moscow, also stand out: both have among the youngest populations and lowest homeownership rates in the state, and both posted two of the three largest score declines. Idaho's markets do not move as a single unit, and the metros that look similar on paper are not always producing similar results.

How PropertyIQ Scores Idaho Markets

PropertyIQ scores markets on a 0-100 scale where 50 represents the state average. A score above 50 means above-average market conditions compared to the Idaho baseline... The score is updated monthly and is built from a market's demand signal -- home-value momentum, pending ratios, inventory trends, days on market, and the share of listings cutting price, drawn from Zillow and Realtor.com data. It is a forward-looking estimate of how a market is likely to perform over roughly the next three years relative to its state, where 50 equals the state average.