Historical Housing Prices Project
Data Sources
Data Sources for the Historical Housing Prices Project.
The Historical Housing Prices Project uses real estate sections from historical newspapers that were microfilmed and made available online. A team of scholars based at the University of Pittsburgh, Trinity College Dublin, and the University of California, Merced, with support from the National Science Foundation and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, digitized approximately 2.7 million listings from the newspapers listed below. The newspapers and access sites used in the project are listed below.
| City | Newspapers | Access Site |
|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | Atlanta Constitution (all years) | Newspapers.com; New York Public Library |
| Baltimore | Sun (all years) | Newspapers.com; New York Public Library |
| Boston | Boston Globe (all years) | ProQuest |
| Charleston | Post-Courier (all years) | Genealogybank.com; New York Public Library |
| Chicago | Chicago Tribune (all years) | ProQuest |
| Cincinnati | Cincinnati Enquirer (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| Cleveland | Plain Dealer (all years) | Genealogybank.com |
| Dallas | Dallas Morning News (all years) | dallasnews.com; Genealogybank.com; New York Public Library |
| Detroit | Detroit Free Press (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| Houston | Post (to 1924) | Newspapers.com |
| Houston | Chronicle (from 1924) | Genealogybank.com; Houston Public Library |
| Las Vegas | Review Journal (all years) | Genealogybank.com |
| Los Angeles | LA Times (all years) | Newspapers.com; New York Public Library |
| Louisville | Courier Journal (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| Memphis | Commercial Appeal (all years) | Genealogybank.com |
| Miami | Miami Metropolis/Daily News (1910-1940) | Newspapers.com |
| Miami | Miami Herald (from 1920) | Newspapers.com |
| Minneapolis | Star Tribune (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| Nashville | Tennessean (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| New Orleans | Times Picayune (all years) | Newspapers.com; New York Public Library |
| New York City | New York Times (all years) | ProQuest |
| New York City | New York Daily News (from 1980) | Newspapers.com |
| New York City | Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890-1940) | Newspapers.com |
| New York City | Bronx Homes News (1907-1940) | Bronx County Archive |
| Philadelphia | Philadelphia Inquirer (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| Phoenix | Arizona Republic (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| Pittsburgh | Post Gazette (all years) | Newspapers.com |
| Portland | Oregonian (all years) | Genealogybank.com |
| Salt Lake City | Tribune (all years) | Genealogybank.com; New York Public Library |
| San Diego | Union (all years) | Genealogybank.com |
| San Francisco | San Francisco Chronicle (all years) | Genealogybank.com |
| Seattle | (Daily) Times (all years) | Genealogybank.com; New York Public Library |
| Washington D.C. | Washington Post (all years) | ProQuest; New York Public Library |
The listings were transformed into indices using hedonic methods to control for both observed and unobserved housing attributes. Interested users should consult Section 4 of the associated working paper, “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006” for details on the methodology.
The HHP Project now resides at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Because the HHP rent and sales series are based on publicly available sources, they can be freely distributed. Users can generate figures showing the change in the price level of owned or rented housing over time using the Data Explorer or download the associated indices from this web page. When using data or figures from this tool, we request that you include the following citation:
Any data and/or data visualizations taken directly or indirectly from this website should be cited as:
- Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Historical Housing Prices (HHP) Project, https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/regional-economic-analysis/historical-housing-prices, "[access date]".
We advise making explicit reference to the date when the database was consulted, as statistics are subject to revisions.
Researchers using the housing price indices should also cite:
- Lyons, Ronan C., Allison Shertzer, Rowena Gray, and David Agorastos, “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006,” 2024. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Working Paper 24-12.
This tool will expand over time to include additional series, so please check back for updates.