7 states where pre-war houses are worth more than the typical home

When it comes to the value of your home, advanced age isn’t always a bad thing.As a general rule, newer homes are worth more than older ones.Nationwide, the typical owner-occupied home built since 2020 is worth about $462,000, well above the $340,000 value of the overall median home, which was built in 1981, according to recently released US Census Bureau data.Meanwhile, homes built before 1940, which account for about 12% of US housing stock, have a national median value of just $272,000.But in seven states, along with Washington, DC, pre-1940 homes are typically worth more than the median home, according to a Realtor.com analysis of the data from the 2023 American Community Survey.They are California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Oregon, Florida, Massachusetts, and Alaska.It’s an unusual group of states, spanning both coasts and including both of the noncontiguous states, neither of which had statehood in 1940.Among those states, California has the largest price premium for pre-war homes, with the median pre-1940 value of $930,100 exceeding the overall median home value by more than $200,000.The difference in values doesn’t appear to be based on size.

In California at least, the median pre-1940 home has 13% less square footage, and is on an 18% smaller lot, than the typical home built from 1940 onward, according to data from real estate intelligence platform LocalLogic.At the local level, California has 12 metro areas where pre-1940 values exceed typical values, the most of any state.The largest metro-level gap in the nation is in Santa Barbara County, where the older homes are typically worth $1,593,900, roughly double the local median.Known as the American Riviera, Santa Barbara initially boomed with wealth in the early 1900s, first with the world’s first offshore oil drilling operation and then as home to the world’s largest movie studio during the silent era.Many of the grand homes from that period still stand today.However, in Santa Barbara and nearby afflu...