Median Home Values and Mortgage Payments In Your Area, How Much Have They Increased?
The housing market in the U.S. is on one of its hottest stretches in history. The past year and a half has brought record rates of bidding wars, strong demand, low inventory, and continual low interest rates.
My house has appreciated about 30% since the start of the pandemic, although some of that is still being fueled by Amazon.com choosing the location of it’s HQ2 nearby.
Regular Accidental FIRE readers know I constantly case the entire internet for cool mapping sites and tools that show various aspect of personal finance in a mappy way. And I’ve found another site that has a simple interactive map showing median home values by county and increases over the past year.
Tools like this are invaluable if you’re looking to use real estate investing as your path to FI, or if you simply want to relocate or buy that second vacation home. So let’s get to it.
The Map
The map is from the National Association of Realtors and shows median home values broken down by county. When you open it you get this…
There are zoom buttons on the left as well as a reset button and some selection tools, but overall the map is very basic. That’s okay because it’s main function is to show the median home price in each county and the increase from 2020 – 2021.
If you hover your mouse over any county you get a pop-up that shows those two things (this might not work the same on a smartphone, it’s probably best to use a desktop).
Here’s a sample of Loudon county Virginia which happens to be the county with the highest median household incomes in the entire U.S. It has a median home value of $625,235 which represents an 8.9% increase from the previous year.
Even though Loudon County Virginia has the highest median household incomes in the U.S., it’s home values are far from the highest. Let’s look at the San Francisco area shall we…
San Mateo County has a median home value of 1,195,275. That means half of the homes are valued at more than that. The situation there has been out of control for a while now, so much that public school teachers in San Mateo can’t live where they teach.
Monthly Mortgage Payment
If you scroll down below the map on the page you’ll find a simple monthly mortgage calculator. Choose a state and a county from the pulldown menus and it displays the current median monthly mortgage payment as well as the payment from a year earlier.
Wow, $4,500 smackers a month. And I’m sure most of those folks have $50,000 SUVs as well, probably two of them for each household. Their monthly costs for just housing and transportation are probably in the $6,000 range or higher.
Notice the mortgage payment went down in San Mateo County by $62. That’s one of the few counties that saw a decrease, most went up as the site explains:
Although mortgage rates are lower than a year earlier, the mortgage payment is higher in 98% of the counties across the country due to the fast price appreciation. This causes many would-be homebuyers to be priced out of the market.
I’m financially independent so I’d like to think I’m not priced out of most of these markets. But from a sane and rational perspective – meaning the amount of money I think is reasonable to spend on housing – yes I’m priced out of many.
Geoarbitrage
So there you have it financial warriors, a great mapping resource that shows the median home value by county and the increase from last year. And they throw in a nice simple monthly mortgage calculator as well.
I post lots of tools like this that show various aspects of money and finance from a location perspective. If you’re considering Geoarbitrage in the United States or if you’re looking to real estate to help you get to financial independence this mapping tool can help you understand housing market dynamics across the country.
Also be sure to check out my Geoarbitrage Resources Page that has tons of great tools to help you find your perfect location.
I hope you find these resources handy and I will continue to expose valuable tools that can help when deciding on a geoarbitrage strategy.
What a fun tool! Honestly, whenever I see statistics on median home prices or average year/year increases, I can’t help but feel (anecdotally) like they are understated.
Even areas I used to scope out for reasonably priced homes have Skyrocketed in value. Houses that used to sell for 200k are listing for 300k and usually selling for more than that!
Again, maybe this is purely anecdote, but it feels like the situation is even worse than the statistics show.
It all depends on the area, that’s why maps matter. It’s definitely understated in some areas but overstated in others.
I love “your” maps. Unfortunately, when I clicked on the link in the text just ahead of your map, it took me to data in table form, but I couldn’t find the map?? Glad to see my area in the North Georgia mountains as blue, but would love to be able to click on my specific county to view the details…
Try another browser Fritz or check if yours is blocking any high-end stuff like Tableau 🙂
the baffling thing to me is some areas near where i grew up have seen prices soar. i know the crappy parts and even those are getting relatively expensive. but…in my nasty little hometown i just saw a house for 60k on the zillow machine. anybody wanna go live there? i sure don’t.
A house for $60k is something so foreign to use here around D.C. Folks who buy studio condos in the city pay that much for a parking space. But Baltimore on the other hand, you can get a house their for $25k. Not kidding.
I live in SoCal so definitely HCOL. My neighborhood of $500-600k houses (pre-pandemic) is now $1.1 million+. It’s freaking crazy! And there’s still very low inventory. When I was a kid and pictured a million dollar house, my current house is not it 🙂
Haha, yes the million dollar home looks different in reality than what we used to think. Things are crazy!
Awesome tool as always Dave. These housing prices are just ludicrous. Grateful I’m planted in my forever home and it’s all paid for. The market in Spokane area is equally insane. Now I know by how much much thanks to this
I’ve only been to Spokane once, found it interesting. Would love to get out there again!
I wonder what rising interest rates might do to the housing market? Maps are cool – keep em coming!
Well, we’ll see soon enough 🙂 – Thanks!