How much is the land under a house worth? That’s the question a new working paper from the Federal Housing Finance Agency seeks to answer. The document, entitled “The Price of Residential Land for Counties, ZIP codes, and Census Tracts in the United States,” measures the land price per acre by year for counties, ZIP codes, and census tracts in the U.S. by using over 16 million appraisals of single-family homes submitted to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 2012 and 2018. According to the release, the report will be updated later this year to include a property’s “land share” – which is the percentage of home value that is attributed to the land.
“The new land price measures confirm what economists have long theorized — land prices decrease the further you get from the city center. The authors also found that from 2012 through 2017, land prices have, on average, been appreciating faster than house prices (pictured).”
Click here to read the full report at FHFA.gov.
