Local House Price Dynamics: New Indices and Stylized Facts

We introduce the first publicly available data set of constant-quality house price indices for counties, ZIP codes and census tracts in the United States, at an annual frequency, over a 40-year period. Between 1990 and 2015, house price gradients within large cities steepen, documenting a reversal of decades of increasing relative desirability of suburban locations. Real house prices are more likely to be nonstationary near the centers of large cities. Within-city differences in house price appreciation at the ZIP code level are, on average, about half of between-city differences, though this ratio varies depending on the time period and city size.