Baltimore, Maryland.
Typical home $184,804 (-3.7% in a year), asking rent $1,762 (+3.6%). Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$436 (+82%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $7,098 -4%
- $191,902$184,804 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $11,405 +7%
- $173,399$184,804 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Baltimore$970
- Maryland$2,230
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 54 years.
Typical home values in Baltimore, MD fell 3.7% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Baltimore, MD rose 3.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Baltimore runs $370/mo less than renting one. The gap peaked at $498 in Oct 2017.
That is $1,393 a month against $1,762 rent: a $970 mortgage payment, plus $225 property tax and $198 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Baltimore
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,393
- Renting$1,762
- Mortgage only$970
Property tax · $225/mo 1.46% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Baltimore City, MD
Insurance & upkeep · $198/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore is a city of 585,708 people in Baltimore city. Half its households earn more than $62,177 a year and half less, against $62,177 across Baltimore city; 20% of its people live below the poverty line. 48% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 52% are rented. Unemployment in Baltimore was 5.5% in August 2026, and Baltimore city had 0.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Baltimore is a large port city on the Chesapeake Bay region's northern edge, and it is a city of rowhouse neighborhoods, each with its own character. Fewer homes are lived in by their owners than renters' homes taking the lead would suggest elsewhere, with renting common across the city, and incomes here sit about where they do across the county, which is the city itself. Winters are cold and summers are hot, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Most residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, government and retail. Some of the largest workplaces in the city are Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore City Public Schools and The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Job numbers have been roughly steady, and joblessness has eased a little over the past year.
Things to do. The National Aquarium is in or beside town, and so is the Walters Art Museum, one of several museums within the city. Baseball fans can see Oriole Park at Camden Yards, also in or beside town. Fort McHenry, a historic fort, is a short drive away.
Report a mistake
- 255,668households
- 36%of adults have a degree
- 20%below the poverty line
- 29 mintypical commute
- 18%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Baltimore city had 347,764 jobs in 2025, 0.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 44° and lows near 30°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 73°. About 44 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Md Sci Ctr Baltimore weather station, a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Baltimore
- Johns Hopkins UniversityUniversity or college21,559
- Baltimore City Public SchoolsSchool district10,874FTE
- THE Johns Hopkins HospitalGeneral hospital9,718FTE
- University of Maryland, BaltimoreUniversity or college7,717
- University of Maryland MED SYSGeneral hospital6,813FTE
- Sinai Hospital of BaltimoreGeneral hospital3,784FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage3,592
- Johns Hopkins Bayview Med. CTRGeneral hospital2,865FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 279 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 83,671 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Baltimore’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Baltimore city and the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD metro.
Baltimore home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Baltimore$184,804
- Maryland$424,890
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Baltimore listings, and the typical home goes pending in 25 days — the market is roughly in balance.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Baltimore28.36%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Baltimore25
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Baltimore3,144
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Baltimore777
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Baltimore$216,732
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Baltimore98.72%
Zip codes with a Baltimore address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Baltimore — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Baltimore
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21215 | Baltimore | 52,229 | $1,312 | $158,625 |
| 21206 | Baltimore | 48,902 | $1,607 | $218,291 |
| 21224 | Baltimore | 47,465 | $2,162 | $232,620 |
| 21229 | Baltimore | 46,679 | $1,528 | $170,468 |
| 21218 | Baltimore | 44,014 | $1,454 | $181,991 |
| 21212 | Baltimore | 33,974 | $1,686 | $335,737 |
| 21230 | Baltimore | 32,977 | $2,191 | $265,080 |
| 21217 | Baltimore | 30,792 | $1,529 | $91,872 |
| 21209 | Baltimore | 30,126 | $1,754 | $444,961 |
| 21216 | Baltimore | 29,426 | $1,547 | $113,799 |
| 21213 | Baltimore | 28,058 | $1,740 | $118,612 |
| 21239 | Baltimore | 27,346 | $1,477 | $211,950 |
| 21214 | Baltimore | 21,092 | $1,450 | $254,614 |
| 21202 | Baltimore | 20,683 | $1,711 | $184,462 |
| 21223 | Baltimore | 19,572 | $1,596 | $65,619 |
| 21201 | Baltimore | 18,307 | $1,474 | $217,563 |
| 21231 | Baltimore | 14,969 | $2,323 | $291,837 |
| 21211 | Baltimore | 14,969 | $2,159 | $278,340 |
| 21210 | Baltimore | 14,134 | $1,750 | $480,298 |
| 21205 | Baltimore | 13,013 | $1,857 | $108,282 |
| 21226 | Curtis Bay | 6,674 | $1,454 | $313,877 |