Methodology

The HHP Project uses information from approximately 2.7 million newspaper real estate listings to create consistent price indices for both for-sale and rented housing for 30 cities using hedonic methods. We flexibly control for the size of the housing unit (either the number of rooms or bedrooms), the type (house or apartment), a measure of location within the city, and a set of fixed effects to control for changes in the unobserved quality of housing. The national indices are computed by aggregating the city-level indices using the populations as weights. The resulting indices show the percentage change in either rents or sales prices relative to the chosen base year. Users interested in the specification details can find them in Section 4 of the associated working paper, “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006.”

The city-level indices are available for the following cities and years.