Median home value

Definition

Median home value is the 50th-percentile self-reported value of owner-occupied housing units. We use the American Community Survey 5-year aggregation at the ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level, then aggregate to places using population-weighted averaging across constituent ZCTAs.

Source data

• Census ACS 5-Year (B25077) — Median value of owner-occupied housing units, by ZCTA (2019–2023)

Steps

1. Pull median home value (variable B25077_001E) at the ZCTA level from ACS 5-Year 2019–2023.
2. For each Census Place, identify all ZCTAs that intersect via TIGER polygon overlay.
3. Take a population-weighted average across constituent ZCTAs (weights from B01003_001E, total population).
4. Filter Census sentinel values: ACS encodes suppressed/unreliable values as -666,666,666 — these are discarded before aggregation.

Known limitations

• Self-reported by householders; differs from transaction-derived measures like Zillow ZHVI or FHFA HPI by 10–20% in either direction depending on local market conditions.
• ACS 5-Year is a moving average; the 2019–2023 value is centered on 2021, not 2023. Use Zillow ZHVI or FHFA HPI for current-month signal.
• Includes only owner-occupied units. Investor-owned and rental-only properties are excluded — material in places with high rental shares.
• Aggregating ZCTAs to places loses within-place variation; in cities with strong block-level segregation, the place-level median may not match any individual neighborhood.
• Pop-weighting can mask ZCTA disparities — see the place page's ZIP pills for the per-ZCTA values when this matters.

Where this metric appears

Every place page (at-glance + percentile ranking), the Most expensive small towns list, and as the numerator in Years-to-own.

Related methodology

• Years-to-own
• Zillow ZHVI (alternative)
• FHFA HPI (alternative)

Cite this methodology

Commerce Institute. (2026). Median home value — Methodology. Retrieved from https://commerceinstitute.org/methodology/median-home-value/.