The median new house sold in the United States in July went for $393,800, per the Census Bureau. The median existing house went for $434,100, per the National Association of Realtors. That is a $40,300 gap, and it runs the wrong way.

New construction usually commands a premium. A new house comes with new wiring, a new roof, a new furnace and a builder’s warranty, and buyers have historically paid extra for all of it. Right now they are paying less.

The two sides of the market explain the flip. Owners of existing homes are sitting on mortgages far below today’s rates, so few of them list. Resale inventory stood at 1.54 million homes in July, a 4.6-month supply, and tight supply has pushed resale prices up for 37 straight months, according to NAR’s July report. Builders have no such luxury. They held 488,000 unsold new homes at the end of July, a 9.6-month supply at the current sales pace, according to the Census Bureau’s July report. A builder pays for every month a finished house sits. So builders cut prices, and the July new-home median came in below its year-earlier level of $397,300.

The Midwest is where the arithmetic works best for buyers. In smaller Midwestern cities, NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in the same report, “an annual household income of $60,000 would be sufficient to buy a median-priced home.” Cleveland shows why. The median sale price in the city was $148,000 over the three months through June, per Redfin, up 10.7% from a year earlier but still roughly a third of the national figure.

Two cautions. National medians reflect the mix of what sold, and a shift toward smaller new houses moves the median down without any single house getting cheaper. And Cleveland resale prices sit so low that a new build here will still usually cost more than the median existing house. The local lesson is narrower: builders are pricing to sell, and the premium for new construction is thinner than it has been in years.

If you are shopping in Northeast Ohio this fall, price both. Get the number on the new build and on the comparable resale, and make the builder compete for you. The gap will not hold forever. It is real today.