Duluth Housing Market

Summary

Duluth's citywide median, price per square foot, year-over-year change and days to pending are listed and dated in the data block on this page, and refreshed monthly. What that single citywide figure cannot tell you is that neighborhood medians in this city span roughly a factor of five, from the low $160,000s to the mid $800,000s. This page gives the citywide numbers, the neighborhood spread underneath them, and an honest account of which published figures are too small a sample to believe.

The headline numbers

Duluth's citywide figures describe a moderately priced, moderately paced market that has been appreciating steadily rather than dramatically.

The median sale price, price per square foot, year-over-year change and days-to-pending for the current month are listed in the data block at the top of this page, with the month each describes and the source it came from. We update those monthly and date them, rather than writing them into the prose where they would quietly go stale.

Two comparisons put the city in context. Superior, Wisconsin, across the bay, runs consistently cheaper, and it sits in a different state with a materially different tax structure, which is worth modeling directly rather than assuming. Hermantown, the region's new-construction suburb, carries the highest price per square foot in the metro. Between those two poles, Duluth proper is where most of the region's transactions happen.

What the citywide numbers do not tell you is which Duluth you would be buying into.

Duluth is not one market

The single most useful fact about this market is that the citywide median describes almost nobody's actual purchase.

Neighborhood medians on this site span roughly a factor of five, from the low $160,000s at the bottom to the mid $800,000s at the top, inside one city of about 86,000 people. That is a wider internal spread than many metropolitan areas several times Duluth's size, and it exists because Duluth's neighborhoods were built for different purposes in different decades and have aged differently since.

The pattern is broadly geographic. The lakeshore and the east-side hillside carry the oldest intact architecture and the highest prices. The ground above the ridgeline is newer, flatter, more conventional and clusters tightly around the citywide median. The west side and the river corridor, built around industry that has largely gone, carry the lowest prices in the city and the most house per dollar. Lincoln Park, between downtown and the west side, is the cheapest per square foot and has the most visible commercial turnaround.

The practical consequence for a buyer is that a budget does not narrow you to a price tier so much as to a part of the city, and the parts of the city differ in the things budgets do not capture: winter grades, walkability, school pathway, lot shape, and how old the plumbing is.

Every figure is read live from that neighborhood's own page, which cites its own source and date. This table cannot fall out of step with them.

Which numbers to trust, and which to ignore

This is the part most market pages leave out, and it is the part that will save you money.

Trust the citywide direction. The citywide median and year-over-year change sit on the whole city's transaction volume. They are a reasonable description of where the market is going.

Do not trust a single neighborhood's year-over-year figure. In any given month the neighborhood year-over-year changes on this site range from strongly positive to steeply negative, and the extremes at both ends are listed in the data block above. Those are not real movements. They are what happens when a neighborhood that closes a couple of dozen houses a year has a few unusually large or small sales land in the same month. The clearest proof sits on this site: the neighborhood posting the highest year-over-year gain had its price per square foot move in the opposite direction over the same period. A real market cannot do both at once. A small sample can.

Treat price per square foot as the more stable comparison. It is less sensitive to which particular houses happened to sell, and it is the number we lean on when two sources disagree about a neighborhood.

Read days on market as a competition signal. The citywide pace is fast. Neighborhoods well above that pace are where a buyer has actual negotiating room, and they are usually the cheaper ones.

Where the medians are deliberately blank

A substantial share of the Duluth neighborhoods on this site have no published median, and that is a decision rather than a gap. They are listed at the end of the table above, each with the reason it carries no figure.

A median computed on a handful of sales a year is not a market rate, it is an average of whatever happened to close. Publishing one implies a precision that does not exist and can move a buyer's offer by tens of thousands of dollars in either direction. Where that is the situation, this site leaves the headline median null, says why on the page, and gives a working price range instead, drawn from the range of properties that actually trade there.

The neighborhoods in that category are mostly small, mostly far west or on the water, and in several cases the housing stock has nothing comparable within it. A riverfront cottage and a manufactured home on five acres can both be sales in the same neighborhood in the same year and tell you nothing about each other. In those places, price from actual close comparables, get an agent who has sold in that specific corner, and expect the appraisal to be a negotiation rather than a formality.

Two neighborhoods on this site also carry conflicting figures from different reputable sources, differing by amounts too large to reconcile. Both pages show the conflict rather than picking the flattering number.

12 of 26 Duluth neighborhoods carry no published median. That is a deliberate omission, not missing data.

Rent, ownership and the other half of the market

Duluth is a strongly owner-occupied city with pockets that are not, and the difference matters to investors and renters in opposite directions.

Owner-occupancy across the neighborhoods on this site runs from single digits to the mid nineties. The highest rates are on the east side, above the hill and in the far west; the lowest are downtown, in the East End hillside and in Lincoln Park, where the housing was built dense and much of it has been rental for a long time. Median gross rents span a similarly wide band, with the university-adjacent and downtown-adjacent areas at the top and the far west at the bottom.

For an investor, the relevant pattern is that the lowest purchase prices and the highest rental shares overlap in the near-west neighborhoods. For a renter, the relevant pattern is that rent tracks proximity to downtown and the universities far more tightly than it tracks house prices.

All tenure and rent figures on this site come from the Census American Community Survey five-year estimates, which are stable and slow rather than current. Each neighborhood page states which Census geography it used and flags where that geography covers more ground than the neighborhood does.

If you are buying

Start from the part of the city rather than the price. Because the spread is so wide and so geographic, deciding whether you want the lakeshore, the ridge, the west side or the river corridor narrows the budget question faster than the reverse.

Budget for the housing stock, not just the house. Most of Duluth's inventory predates 1940, and the inspection list that comes with it is real and consistent: knob-and-tube remnants, plaster, lead paint, asbestos in older insulation, older sewer laterals, ice dams, and radon, which is worth testing anywhere in this city given the bedrock. At the lower end of the market these findings matter more relative to the purchase price, not less.

Verify the school assignment for the specific address rather than the neighborhood. Several attendance boundaries in this city run through neighborhoods rather than around them.

And check the winter approach before you sign. The difference between a hillside street and flat ground above the ridge is the single most underrated variable in Duluth housing, and it is invisible in every listing.

If you are selling

Price against your neighborhood, not the city. Given the spread, the citywide median is not a useful anchor for most addresses, and in the thinnest neighborhoods it is actively misleading in both directions.

Expect the pace to vary by where you are. The citywide days-to-pending figure is fast, but the slower neighborhoods sit at roughly double it, and condition drives the outcome there more than competition does.

If your home is in one of the neighborhoods where published medians are unreliable, expect appraisal to be a negotiation, and expect a buyer who has done their homework to arrive with comparables rather than a number off a portal.

How we compile this page

Citywide figures come from published market data, cited and dated in the block at the top of this page, and are refreshed monthly.

Neighborhood figures are not computed by us and are not duplicated onto this page. Each one lives on its own neighborhood page with its own source and date, and the table on this page is built from those records directly, so this summary cannot drift away from the pages it summarises. If a neighborhood page updates, this page updates with it.

Where a figure is too small a sample to be meaningful, we leave it null and explain why rather than publishing it. Where two reputable sources disagree, we show both rather than choosing. Where a Census figure covers more ground than the neighborhood it describes, the page says so.

This page is informational and is not an appraisal, an offer, or advice about a specific property.

How the neighbours compare

Common questions about the Duluth market

What is the average home price in Duluth, MN?

The citywide median was about $290,000 as of June 2026, at roughly $186 per square foot, with homes going pending in about 20 days (Redfin, accessed 2026-08-13). That single number hides an enormous spread: neighborhood medians on this site run from about $165,000 to about $848,000.

Is the Duluth housing market going up or down?

Citywide the most recent reading was up about 5.5 percent year over year. Individual neighborhoods disagree violently with that and with each other, ranging from roughly plus 70 percent to minus 26 percent in the same month. Those extremes are sample artifacts in small neighborhoods, not real movement. Trust the citywide direction; do not trust a single neighborhood's year-over-year figure.

What is the cheapest neighborhood in Duluth?

Of the neighborhoods with a publishable median, Lincoln Park is the lowest at about $165,000, followed by Denfeld at about $200,000 and Gary-New Duluth at about $207,000. Several far-west neighborhoods likely sit lower still but trade too thinly to publish a median.

What is the most expensive neighborhood in Duluth?

Park Point posted the highest recent median at about $848,000, though that figure sits on very few sales and moves sharply. Congdon Park at about $645,000 is the more consistently expensive neighborhood and the one most buyers mean when they ask.

Why does this site leave some neighborhood prices blank?

Because a median computed on a handful of sales a year is noise, and publishing it would imply a precision that does not exist. As of the current refresh, 12 of the 26 Duluth neighborhoods on this site have no publishable median. We say so and give a working range instead.

How often is this page updated?

Monthly. Every figure carries the month it describes and the source it came from, and the page states when it was last refreshed.