Category · 5 articles
Housing
Median home values, gross rent, vacancy, ownership and price-to-rent across America.
What you'll find here
Articles in Housing sit at the intersection of public data and lived experience. Every piece starts from a specific Census table, traces the number back to the household-level question that produced it, and then asks the harder question: what does this actually mean for the people, places, and markets it describes?
We avoid the two failure modes of most data writing: throwing a chart on a page and assuming it speaks for itself, or over-interpreting a single year of estimates as a trend. Where a finding warrants caveats — margin of error, geographic crosswalks, ACS1 vs ACS5 trade-offs — those caveats are in the body, not buried in a footnote.
Featured
11 min read
Median Home Value vs. Median Rent: Why the Gap Tells You More Than Either Number
The price-to-rent ratio derived from Census tables B25077 and B25064 is one of the cleanest signals of where housing markets are stretched. Here's how to read it.
Continue reading →More in Housing
9 min read
Homeownership Rate by State: The Map of American Property
The U.S. homeownership rate is about 65%, but the spread between states is 25 points. Here's what the Census Bureau's owner-occupied housing data shows.
9 min read
How to Compare Neighborhoods Like a Real Estate Expert (Using the Same Data They Do)
Real estate professionals don't rely on gut feeling or a drive-by — they read the same public housing and income tables you can access for free. Here's the framework.
9 min read
How to Compare Housing Markets Before Buying a Home
Buying in the wrong market at the wrong price-to-rent ratio is an expensive mistake. Here's a data-driven way to compare housing markets before you make an offer.
8 min read
Home Value Comparison Across U.S. Cities: What the Gaps Actually Mean
A $200,000 gap in median home value between two cities isn't automatically meaningful — it depends entirely on local income. Here's how to compare home values the right way.