Pillar Guide
U.S. Housing: Median Values, Rent and Ownership by ZIP
A national housing guide built on Census ACS5 — median home values, gross rent, vacancy, ownership rates and the structural forces shaping U.S. housing markets.
Last updated May 2026 · Sourced from U.S. Census Bureau ACS5 (vintage 2023)
The four numbers that define a housing market
City Zip Compare uses four ACS variables to characterize every ZIP-level housing market: median home value (B25077), median gross rent (B25064), homeownership rate (B25003), and vacancy (B25004). These four together describe almost everything that matters about local housing.
The national figures from ACS5 vintage 2023: $303,400 median home value, $1,406 median gross rent, ~65% homeownership rate, and a national rental vacancy rate that has hovered near historic lows since 2021. ZIP-level dispersion around these numbers is enormous and is the entire reason this site exists.
Owner-occupied housing values
ACS Table B25077 reports the median value of owner-occupied housing units — self-reported by owners, which biases the figure modestly upward in hot markets and downward in cold ones, but tracks closely with FHFA and Case-Shiller indices over time.
The geographic distribution is now well known: coastal California, the New York metro, Boston, Seattle, and parts of the D.C. corridor sit at the top with median values above $700K and frequently above $1M in individual ZIPs. The Mountain West (Boise, Salt Lake City, Bozeman) saw the largest percentage increases between 2019 and 2023. Much of the rural Midwest and Deep South still posts median values under $150K.
Rent and the rental market
Median gross rent (B25064) includes contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities, which makes it more comparable across regions than asking-rent indices. The $1,406 national median is a useful baseline, but the ZIP-level distribution is heavily right-skewed: a small number of expensive coastal ZIPs pull the mean far above the median.
Rent burden — the share of renter income spent on housing (B25070) — is the more important number for affordability. Roughly 30% of U.S. renters are cost-burdened (30%+ of income on rent), and 15% are severely cost-burdened (50%+).
Ownership, tenure and demographic shifts
The U.S. homeownership rate has hovered around 65% for most of the post-1965 era. ZIP-level ownership rates vary from under 20% in dense urban cores (parts of Manhattan, downtown San Francisco) to over 90% in single-family suburban and exurban ZIPs.
Ownership rates correlate strongly with age, income, race, and household composition. Younger ZIPs (college towns, urban cores) skew renter; older suburban ZIPs skew owner. The post-2008 collapse in homeownership among adults under 35 is one of the defining demographic stories of the last 15 years.