Average vs. Median Home Price: What's the Difference?

The average, or arithmetic mean, is calculated by adding all sale prices and dividing by the number of sales. The median is the middle sale price after the values are sorted. Because unusually high or low values can pull the average up or down, the median can sometimes better describe the middle of a skewed group of sales.

Key Takeaways

Mean = total of all values ÷ number of values.
Median = the middle value once everything is sorted.
A few unusually high or low sales can pull the mean away from what feels 'typical'.
Neither number describes any individual property's value.

Defining mean

Mean (average)

Add up every sale price in the group, then divide by how many sales there were.

Defining median

Median

Sort every sale price from lowest to highest, then take the value in the middle.

A worked example

Take five recent sale prices: $600,000, $620,000, $650,000, $680,000 and $1,400,000.

Measure	Value
Median (middle value)	$650,000
Mean (sum ÷ 5)	$790,000

The $1,400,000 sale pulls the mean noticeably higher, while the median stays at $650,000 — the middle observation, unaffected by how extreme that one high sale was.

When the mean is still useful

The mean isn't wrong or useless — it can be a meaningful figure, especially when a dataset doesn't have extreme outliers. It's simply worth knowing which measure you're looking at, and whether a small number of unusual sales might be shaping it.

What neither number tells you

Note

Neither the mean nor the median describes any individual property. Both are summaries of a group of sales — the value of a specific home depends on its own condition, features and context, not on a citywide or neighbourhood-wide statistic.

Geography, property mix and the time period covered can all shift these numbers substantially, so comparing figures from different sources or areas isn't always an apples-to-apples comparison.