Pull up De Pere on three different real estate sites this week and you will find three different housing markets. One says the typical home here is worth $333,637. Another puts the median sale at $406,000. A third lands at $492,400. None of these numbers is wrong. They are each measuring a different De Pere, because the mailing address on a listing does not always match the city limits most buyers assume it does.
If you are comparing De Pere to another Brown County suburb by median price alone, you may be comparing the wrong number to itself.
The Same City, Four Numbers
Here is what shows up when you check De Pere's home values across the sites buyers actually use, and the window each figure covers:
| Source | Reported figure | Time window |
|---|---|---|
| Redfin | Median sale price, $406,000 (3-month rolling), up 19.2% year over year | Through May 2026 |
| Redfin | Median sale price, $463,950 (single month), up 36.3% year over year | March 2026 |
| Movoto | Median sale price, $492,400 | May 2026 |
| Zillow (Home Value Index) | Typical home value, $333,637, up 3.4% year over year | June 2026 |
The gap between Redfin's own two figures is the tell. A rolling three-month median and a single-month median from the same platform, covering overlapping months, land nearly $58,000 apart. Sale counts diverge just as sharply: Redfin recorded 87 closings in De Pere in May 2026, while Movoto counted 182 for the same month. Those are not typos. They are two different boundaries drawn around the same name.
One Zip Code, Four Governments
Here is the boundary problem in plain terms. De Pere's 54115 zip code does not stop at the city line. Active listings pulled on July 30, 2026 show homes carrying a "De Pere" address in at least four separate jurisdictions:
- A three-bedroom in Enclave Estates, listed at $414,900, addressed as De Pere but sitting in the Village of Hobart
- A five-bedroom on Big Sky Pass, listed at $924,900, addressed as De Pere but sitting in the Town of Ledgeview
- A three-bedroom in Morningside Acres, listed at $449,900, sitting inside the actual City of De Pere
Add in new construction filed under the Town of Lawrence, where builders have listed homes from the mid $600,000s to $760,000, and you have a single postal identity stretched across city, village, and township lines, each with its own zoning, its own new-construction pipeline, and its own price ceiling. A data provider that pulls listings by zip code will capture all of it. One that pulls by legal city boundary will not. That difference alone can move a reported median by six figures depending on which handful of homes closed that month.
A River Runs Through the City Too
Even inside the actual city limits, De Pere is not one housing stock. The Fox River splits it into East De Pere and West De Pere, a division that predates the modern city itself. The two sides consolidated into one municipal government back in 1890, but the housing stock never merged.
East De Pere is the historic half: Cape Cods, mid-century ramblers, Georgian Revivals, and Queen Anne Victorians on streets that predate the interstate, walking distance to the Broadway Historic District and the Fox River Trail. It is served by the Unified School District of De Pere, founded in 1878. Homes here trade on character and proximity to downtown, not square footage.
West De Pere is where the growth has gone. It falls under the West De Pere School District and is where active builders have concentrated new subdivisions. Best Built Inc., one of the more active residential builders in the city, delivered its Honeysuckle subdivision in full by 2025 after breaking ground in 2021, and continues to release new phases of lots at Waterview Heights, its active West De Pere community. Newer construction in Wisconsin is running $225 to $400 or more per square foot depending on finish level, which is a meaningfully different cost basis than a renovated Cape Cod on the east side.
Two sides of the same city, two different pricing logics. Averaging them into one "De Pere median" tells you less than comparing them separately would.
The New Construction You Can't Google Yet
Here is the friction that catches move-up buyers off guard. A meaningful share of De Pere's newest inventory never appears on the major portals in real time, and some of it never appears at all. Builder-direct subdivisions like Waterview Heights are sold through the builder's own sales team rather than fed automatically into MLS feeds the way resale listings are. If you are searching De Pere by scrolling a portal alone, you are seeing the resale market and a delayed version of the new-construction market, not the full picture.
That matters for two reasons. First, it means the "median price" you see skews toward whatever is actually indexed, which underrepresents the newest and often priciest homes until they close and get backfilled into the data. Second, it means a buyer who wants to see everything currently buildable in West De Pere or Ledgeview needs to go past the portal search and contact builders directly, the same way you would reach out for any home not yet publicly listed.
If you want to track what is actually moving through the city's approval pipeline, the City of De Pere posts its own development and site plan project map, which shows what is under review, recently approved, or completed. It will not tell you a sale price, but it will tell you where the next wave of inventory is actually coming from before it hits a portal.
What This Means for Your Comparison
If you are using De Pere's median price to decide whether it is more or less affordable than another Brown County suburb, ask two questions before you trust the number. First, does this figure come from the city proper or the broader zip code that also captures Ledgeview, Lawrence, and Hobart addresses. Second, does it reflect a rolling multi-month average or a single month, given how much a handful of new-construction closings can swing a small sample.
A more stable comparison point is price per square foot rather than headline median, since it smooths out some of the mix-shift problem, though it still varies: Redfin's price per square foot for the same three-month window ending May 2026 sits at $202, up 5.8% year over year, while Movoto's June 2026 figure runs closer to $224. Even that comparison is not perfectly clean, but it moves less dramatically month to month than a raw median built on fewer than 100 sales.
The more useful question is not "what does De Pere cost" but "what does the De Pere I actually want cost." A buyer set on a walkable historic street near the Broadway Historic District is pricing against a different inventory than a buyer looking at a new build in Waterview Heights or a five-bedroom in Ledgeview carrying a De Pere mailing address. Both are real. Neither is captured by a single median.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a "De Pere" address guarantee the home is inside De Pere city limits? No. Homes addressed as De Pere have shown up in active listings located in the Village of Hobart, the Town of Ledgeview, and the Town of Lawrence, each governed separately from the City of De Pere itself.
Why do De Pere's newest homes sometimes not show up on major search sites? Builder-direct subdivisions are frequently sold through the builder's own sales team before or instead of a standard MLS feed, which means portal searches can lag behind or miss that inventory entirely.
Is East De Pere or West De Pere the better comparison for a move-up buyer? It depends on what you're moving up for. East De Pere trades on walkability and historic character near downtown. West De Pere and the surrounding townships trade on new construction and larger, newer floor plans. They are different products, not different tiers of the same one.
If you are trying to make sense of what a specific De Pere address is actually worth, or which side of the river fits the home you have in mind, Sandra Ranck Real Estate Collective can walk you through the comparable sales that matter for your search, not just the headline number. Reach out to schedule a conversation about your move.
