SEATTLE – It’s no secret that housing prices have been quickly climbing over the past decade — the median home value in the U.S. is higher than ever before, at almost $220,000, and some markets, like San Jose, Las Vegas and Atlanta, are reporting double-digit annual home value growth.
But understanding what buyers can get for their money, and how homeowners’ investments have grown over time, can be tough — especially when the footprint of homes themselves haven’t changed much. To help with this, Zillow Research created a map, released today, that allows users to see just how much a dollar gets you in each market, and how this has changed over time.
To check out the analysis on Zillow® Research and compare multiple markets, click here: https://www.zillow.com/research/how-much-home-does-1-buy-21175/
For example, one dollar will buy you 1.07 square inches of the typical U.S. home, but ten years ago, one dollar bought you 1.23 square inches. Back in 1998, one dollar bought you 2.09 square inches. For reference, one square inch is about twice the size of a postage stamp, and a dollar bill itself is a little more than 13.25 square inchesi.
However, in the city of San Jose, where the typical home is worth almost 84 percent more than it was twenty years ago, one dollar will buy you just 0.20 square inches of a home. In 2008 it bought you 0.37 square inches, and back in 1998, one dollar bought you almost one full square inch.