Q1 Average Home Value
By: Sarah Mann, Zillow Senior PR Specialist | June 6, 2008
The weeks leading up to and the weeks since we launched our Q1 Home Value Reports, I’ve found myself staring at the spreadsheets more than I’d like to admit. Whether walking a reporter through one of the local reports for their market or pulling some key stats from the national report to find trends, you’d think I’d be sick of them. In reality, however, every time I dive in I seem to find something new that I missed the last time around. What caught my attention last week was the average home section.
We define the “average” home as 1500 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, as this is the size of the average home across the U.S. It gets pretty interesting when start you comparing the values of an “average” home between various MSAs. Some examples:
- The “average” home with the lowest value can be found in Flint, MI, at just $41,500. Here’s an example of a home for sale in the area that fits that bill. The Zindex for Flint is $77,000, which indicates that homes in the area are, for the most part, larger than average.
- Santa Barbara, CA on the other hand, boasts the most expensive average home, at $720,500. Check it out. The Zindex for Santa Barbara, however, is $531,000, indicating the opposite– that most homes in that area are actually smaller than average.
- California, the state with some of the greatest depreciating MSAs year-over-year, has 11 of the top 13 most expensive average homes in the U.S. Could this have something to do with home values in the state dropping more significantly than much of the nation?
- The average home across the U.S. is valued at $191,000. Tuscon, AZ; Bakersfield, CA; Richmond, VA; Springfield, MA and Longview, WA are the MSAs with most average “average” homes, as they come closest in value to this national number.
I’ve included an abbreviated list below to give you a sense of just how much this varies across different markets. You can find the list for all 180 markets in our national report, which you can find by clicking the Home Value Reports link at the bottom of any page on Zillow.
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- Categories: Real Estate, Zillow
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Thomas on June 6, 2008 11:06 am
Sarah,
California’s presence on both the highest average price list and the greatest depreciation lists are actually unrelated. The highest average price counties will likely stay that way: Atherton, Palo Alto, Santa Barbara, etc… are not going to drop much in value. However, cities like Sacramento, Antioch and Stockton are dropping like a rock. Why? I think what happened is that people in the outlying areas used mortgage fraud to escalate their prices close to the levels of the desirable neighborhoods. No one really questioned the fact that Stockton should not even be in same category as an Atherton, but none-the-less the parallels were drawn. I was just on Countrywide’s REO website (where they list all of their foreclosure sales) and there are only 6 houses for all of San Mateo County (home to many high average cities). And none of those locations are considered prime in any way.
I think it’s interesting that news outlets and even a supposedly sophisticated analysis firm like Zillow tries to aggregate the state of California into one market. Heck, you can’t even generalize within certain counties around here. I would hope that Zillow can do its part to educate the public that the reason why the Zestimates are wrong for Santa Barbara versus Flint is that the quality of the square foot in SB is substantially higher. I would’ve thought that Zillow had the ability to incorporate some measure of quality into their estimate engine. It’s surprising that it doesn’t.
In the meantime, for home buyers who believe that there is some sort of arbitrage on a square foot basis between Flint and Santa Barbara will be sorely mistaken. Spend a week in both cities in the month of December and I think you’ll figure it out.
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Scott on October 28, 2009 10:43 am
Actually the median house price is still above $800,000. There are still some great buys in Santa Barbara. I have compiled a list of the best buys in town. Check out my website http://www.scottmccosker.com.