US house prices over time

The line below tracks the median sale price of a home in the United States since 1975 — the price of the middle home, with half selling for more and half for less. It uses the Census Bureau and HUD’s sales data. Hover or tap to read off the price for any year, the change on the year before, and how far prices have multiplied since 1975. The dots mark the turning points.

The defining episode is the 2000s housing bubble and its collapse: prices roughly doubled in the first half of the decade, then fell hard when the subprime mortgage market imploded in 2007–09 — the trigger for the global financial crisis. After a slow recovery, the pandemic set off the fastest run-up in modern memory, taking the median past $450,000 in 2022.

What the chart shows

• The 1970s–80s. Prices rose steadily, with much of the early climb reflecting the era’s high general inflation rather than real gains.
• The mid-2000s bubble. Loose lending, securitisation and speculation drove prices up sharply to a peak around 2006–07.
• The subprime crash. As teaser mortgages reset and defaults mounted, prices fell and millions of homes went into foreclosure. The damage spread through the financial system worldwide.
• The 2012 bottom. Prices stabilised and began a long recovery, helped by the Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rates.
• The pandemic boom. Record-low mortgage rates, remote work and tight supply pushed the median to a 2022 peak; prices then dipped as the Fed raised rates and 30-year mortgages climbed back above 7%.

Cash prices vs real (adjusted for inflation)

The headline numbers above are cash (nominal) prices — the dollars actually paid at the time. But a 1975 dollar bought far more than a dollar today, so part of that roughly 11-fold rise is simply the dollar losing value. Switch the chart to Real and every past price is restated in 2024 money — the fair way to compare across the decades.

The real line answers “did homes beat inflation?” Where it rises, prices outpaced the cost of living; where it falls — most starkly in the 2007–2011 bust, when real prices dropped far more than the cash figure — homes lost real value. The big picture: in real terms the typical US home is up roughly 80% since 1975 — a solid gain, but well short of the 11× cash figure, and the mid-2000s bubble and the post-2020 surge stand out as the two genuine real run-ups.

A note on the numbers

“Median sale price” is the price of the middle transaction, so it can shift if the mix of homes selling changes — a quarter when more large or expensive homes sell will nudge the median up even if no individual home got pricier. Repeat-sales indices such as S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller and the FHFA House Price Index control for that by tracking the same homes over time; they tell a similar story. These figures are nominal (not inflation-adjusted), so some of the long climb simply reflects the dollar buying less over time, and they are national medians — coastal metros have risen far more than much of the interior.

Sources

• US Census Bureau — New Residential Sales (median sale prices).
• FRED — Median Sales Price of Houses Sold (MSPUS), US Census & HUD.
• FHFA House Price Index and S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller, for repeat-sales comparison.