Historical Housing Prices Project
Methodology
You can find a description of the data methodology as explained in the working paper “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006,” by Ronan C. Lyons, Allison Shertzer, Rowena Gray, and David Agorastos.
For details on how the sales price series were extended to 2024 with data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, see “Over a Century of Housing Prices, All in One Place.”
The HHP Project uses information from approximately 2.7 million newspaper real estate listings from 1890 to 2006 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. We compute the national indices 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. You can find the specification details in the associated working paper, “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006.”
We extend the sales price series from 2006 to 2024 using the respective MSA-level All-Transactions House Price Index from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Details on this splicing can be found in “Over a Century of Housing Prices, All in One Place.“
The city-level indices are available for the following cities and years.
| City | Rent Start Year | Sales Start Year |
|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | 1890 | 1890 |
| Baltimore | 1890 | 1908 |
| Boston | 1890 | 1890 |
| Charleston | 1894 | 1911 |
| Chicago | 1890 | 1890 |
| Cincinnati | 1890 | 1890 |
| Cleveland | 1894 | 1890 |
| Dallas | 1890 | 1890 |
| Detroit | 1890 | 1890 |
| Houston | 1896 | 1900 |
| Las Vegas | 1948 | 1943 |
| Los Angeles | 1890 | 1890 |
| Louisville | 1890 | 1890 |
| Memphis | 1891 | 1890 |
| Miami | 1915 | 1910 |
| Minneapolis | 1890 | 1890 |
| Nashville | 1890 | 1890 |
| New Orleans | 1890 | 1893 |
| New York | 1890 | 1890 |
| Philadelphia | 1891 | 1890 |
| Phoenix | 1910 | 1910 |
| Pittsburgh | 1892 | 1890 |
| Portland | 1898 | 1898 |
| Salt Lake City | 1891 | 1890 |
| San Diego | 1907 | 1890 |
| San Francisco | 1890 | 1890 |
| Seattle | 1910 | 1910 |
| St. Louis | 1890 | 1890 |
| Tampa | 1915 | 1905 |
| Washington D.C. | 1890 | 1890 |