Median home prices aren’t very interesting because most of the increase is limited to specific competitive areas, and median US home prices hides that effect. I’m sure houses in deeply rural areas haven’t gotten much more expensive, but it isn’t relevant to me.
Well over half of Americans are living in Urban areas so median here is a measure of urban home prices.
Further average home prices reflects overall economic gains. The top 10%, 1%, 0.1%, etc getting richer buy nicer stuff driving up the average but that says little about overall affordability.