The Median Price in North Hills Is Up. The Price Per Square Foot Is Down. Both Are True.

In the three months ending in May 2026, homes in North Hills sold for a median price of $835,000, an increase of 1.8 percent over the same period a year earlier. Over that same window, the median price per square foot fell 11.6 percent. Two numbers, pulled from the same three months, describing the same streets, moving in opposite directions.

A relocating buyer scanning a neighborhood snapshot online sees the top-line figure and assumes North Hills got more expensive this year. A seller checking price per square foot on the next tab assumes it got cheaper. Neither reading is wrong. Both are describing something real. They are just not describing the same thing.

A Second Reading Says the Same Thing

An earlier snapshot of the same submarket, using Redfin's April 2026 data, told a similar story from a different angle. North Hills sold at a median price of $924,656 that month, compared with $424,781 for Raleigh overall, a spread of roughly 2.18 times the citywide figure. Price per square foot ran $345 in North Hills against $232 citywide, a narrower gap of about 1.49 times. Year over year, North Hills' median sale price was up 10.4 percent in that reading while its price per square foot was down 5.5 percent over the same span.

Two different months, two different measurement windows, the same pattern: median climbing, price per square foot slipping. That kind of repetition across separate readings rules out a fluke in a single month's closings. Something structural is producing the gap, and it isn't that North Hills homes are simultaneously becoming more and less valuable.

One Name, Several Housing Stocks

North Hills carries one name on a map, but the homes inside it were not built by the same hands in the same decade for the same buyer.

The area started as a shopping mall in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Redevelopment began in 1999 and has continued in phases since, gradually turning the site and the streets around it into the multi-district area now marketed as Midtown. That history left a residential mix that is unusually varied for a single submarket:

• Detached homes from the original 1960s subdivisions that grew up around the mall
• Renovated versions of those same homes, updated to current finishes and floor plans
• Condo and townhome units added during the redevelopment years
• New-build luxury infill and residential towers delivered more recently

A market breakdown from early 2026 put condos in the area at roughly $307,500 and single-family homes at an average of $1,090,000. Those aren't two prices for one product. They're two different products that happen to share a comp pool. Recent closed sales in the area have ranged from the mid-$600,000s to more than $7 million, a spread wide enough that a single median tells a buyer almost nothing about what a specific home in a specific category is likely to cost.

When a quarter's closings skew toward detached homes and new-build infill, the median climbs. When that same quarter's condo and townhome sales trade flat or soften on a per-square-foot basis, the blended per-square-foot figure falls. No individual home changed value. The mix of what happened to close changed.

North Hills Doesn't Move Like Raleigh

The clearest way to confirm this is a North Hills-specific pattern, not a general market condition, is to set it against the city it sits inside.

Raleigh's two numbers move together. Both are down over the past year, consistent with a single, relatively uniform market cooling at a steady pace. North Hills' two numbers move apart, which is what happens when a name on a map actually contains several markets being averaged into one line.

That distinction matters for anyone comparing North Hills against nearby areas, including buyers relocating from out of state who are working from portal snapshots rather than a walk-through. A submarket where median and per-square-foot figures move in step is a simpler, more legible read. North Hills requires an extra step: identifying which of its housing categories a given listing actually belongs to before the price on the screen means anything.

A New Tower Is About to Widen the Mix Again

Kane Realty's The Strand is under construction adjacent to the Advance Auto Parts Tower in North Hills. The building will bring 362 residences across twenty stories, including penthouse units, along with nearly 9,000 square feet of ground-level retail. First residents are expected in the summer of 2027.

When those units start closing, they will enter the same comp pool as 1960s ranch homes two streets over. A single tower delivering more than 350 luxury units at once is large enough to move a neighborhood-level median on its own, independent of what is happening to the value of any existing home nearby. Anyone using North Hills' blended statistics to time a purchase or a listing between now and 2027 should expect the gap between median price and price per square foot to keep showing up, and possibly widen, as The Strand's closings begin layering into the data.

What to Do With This If You're Pricing a Home Here

The practical takeaway is simpler than the data behind it. A North Hills-wide median or average price per square foot is not a reliable stand-in for what a specific home is worth. The number that matters is the one built from comparable sales within the same category: similar age, similar construction type, similar renovation level, and the same building if the home in question is a condo or tower unit.

For a buyer, that means resisting the pull of the headline figure from a neighborhood snapshot and asking instead what homes like the one under consideration, not the neighborhood as a whole, have actually closed for recently. For a seller, it means the comps supporting a listing price need to come from the same category the home is competing in, not from a blended average that might quietly include a decades-old condo sale or a brand-new infill closing with nothing in common with the property going to market.

This is the kind of pricing question we work through on every North Hills listing, using the same data-first approach that separates a defensible asking price from a guess based on a headline number. It's also why comparing Raleigh's micro-markets against each other, rather than leaning on citywide averages, tends to produce a clearer picture of what a specific address is actually worth.

A Few Questions Worth Answering Directly

Is North Hills a buyer's market or a seller's market right now? It depends on the product. Detached homes and new-build infill have shown enough demand to push the median up over the past year. Condo and townhome pricing on a per-square-foot basis has softened over the same period. A buyer targeting a condo has more room to negotiate than a buyer targeting a detached home in the same zip code.

Does a rising neighborhood median mean my home is worth more than last year? Not automatically. The median reflects what happened to sell during a given window, not what every home in the area is worth. A home's value still depends on how it compares to recent closings of similar homes, not on the direction the blended neighborhood figure happened to move.

Will The Strand's 2027 delivery push North Hills prices up or down? Neither, in any simple sense. It will add a large batch of high-end condo sales into the comp pool, which will likely pull the blended price per square foot in one direction and the blended median in another, depending on how those units price relative to everything else selling at the time. The more useful question for anyone buying or selling here between now and then is which category a given home falls into, not what the combined average is doing.

If you're trying to figure out what a specific North Hills home, whether it's a 1960s ranch, a recent renovation, or a unit in one of the newer towers, is actually worth in today's market, Saira Bruno and the team at SB Real Estate can walk through the comps that actually apply to your property. Schedule a personal consultation and get a pricing read built from the right category, not the neighborhood-wide average.