Short answer. The average U.S. home price is always higher than the median — in 2024, the average new-home price was $524,800 versus a median of $412,300, a 27% premium. The gap exists because a small number of expensive luxury sales pull the arithmetic mean up while leaving the middle transaction unchanged.
| Year | Average Price | Median Price | Avg − Median | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1963 | $19,300 | $17,200 | $2,100 | +12% |
| 1970 | $26,600 | $23,400 | $3,200 | +14% |
| 1980 | $76,400 | $64,600 | $11,800 | +18% |
| 1990 | $149,800 | $122,900 | $26,900 | +22% |
| 2000 | $207,000 | $169,000 | $38,000 | +22% |
| 2005 | $297,000 | $240,900 | $56,100 | +23% |
| 2010 | $272,900 | $221,800 | $51,100 | +23% |
| 2015 | $360,600 | $296,400 | $64,200 | +22% |
| 2020 | $391,900 | $336,900 | $55,000 | +16% |
| 2024 | $524,800 | $412,300 | $112,500 | +27% |
Both the average (arithmetic mean) and the median (middle transaction) describe the same set of home sales — the question is how you summarize a distribution that is not symmetric. The Census Bureau and NAR publish both, but report the median first because it is more representative of what a typical buyer actually paid in any given year.
Why the Average Is Always Higher
The U.S. residential sales distribution has a property called positive skew: prices are bounded near zero on the low end (homes don't sell for negative dollars, and the floor on a sellable property is roughly the cost of demolishing it) but unbounded on the high end (a single $20-million Manhattan sale or a $50-million Beverly Hills sale enters the same monthly transaction set as a $200,000 Cleveland starter home). Because the high end has more room to extend than the low end, the arithmetic mean — which weights every sale by its dollar amount — gets pulled upward. The median, which only counts transactions, ignores how extreme the extremes are.
The gap has been remarkably stable: the average has run between 12% and 28% above the median in every year since the Census Survey of Construction began in 1963. The premium widened from 12% in 1963 to 27% in 2024 — a slow expansion that reflects the growing share of luxury construction and the rising absolute dollar magnitude of high-end sales. In 1963, a $100,000 home was extreme; in 2024, the equivalent outlier is closer to $5 million.
Which Should You Use?
It depends on the question.
- If you are a buyer asking "what does a home cost where I live" — use the median. The median tells you what the middle transaction looked like; the average is distorted by sales you would never personally make.
- If you are tracking affordability or income-to-price ratios — use the median. Affordability metrics like the price-to-income ratio (see the affordability dashboard) and front-end DTI calculations all use median price against median household income to keep the math representative.
- If you are measuring total housing market value or aggregate sales volume in dollars — the average becomes useful, because multiplying mean price by total transactions gives a defensible aggregate. Multiplying median by transactions undercounts the dollars actually changing hands.
- If you are studying market composition or wealth distribution — both numbers together are more informative than either alone. A widening gap between average and median (as the U.S. saw between 1963 and 2024) signals that high-end transactions are growing faster than the typical sale, which is a meaningful market structure observation.
Most professional sources — the Census Bureau, NAR, FHFA, Federal Reserve, and the major real-estate analytics firms — lead with the median for exactly the reason described above: it is more robust. The average is reported alongside it but is rarely the headline number.
Historical Average Home Price by Year
Census Bureau average new-home sale prices, in current dollars, at five-year benchmarks since 1963:
- 1963: $19,300 (series begins)
- 1970: $26,600
- 1980: $76,400 (Volcker-era ceiling)
- 1990: $149,800
- 2000: $207,000
- 2005: $297,000 (pre-crisis peak)
- 2010: $272,900 (post-crash trough)
- 2015: $360,600 (full recovery)
- 2020: $391,900
- 2024: $524,800 (current record)
The 2024 average of $524,800 represents a 27× nominal increase over 1963 ($19,300) and roughly a 2.7× increase in real CPI-adjusted terms over 61 years. Average existing-home prices follow a slightly lower path because the existing-home stock contains older, smaller, more modest properties; the existing-home median is tracked separately by NAR and is summarized in the median home price by year data table.
For the full annual chart and interactive views, see the home prices dashboard. For an inflation-adjusted look, see the 2024 year archive, which contains real-terms translations of the 2024 figures back to every prior year. To understand the methodology behind these series, the how the median home price is calculated Q&A walks through the Census and NAR procedures.
Sources
U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Construction (new homes — average and median sale prices, 1963 onward); National Association of Realtors Existing Home Sales report (existing-home median, 1968 onward). Both series report nominal (current-dollar) prices and are not seasonally adjusted at the annual level.
Related
- Median home price dashboard (interactive chart)
- Median home price by year, 1963–2024
- U.S. Housing Market in 2024
- Q&A: What's the average U.S. home price by year?
- Q&A: How is the median home price calculated?
- Q&A: Median vs. average home price (definitions)
- Q&A: What is the median U.S. home price in 2024?
- More Q&A