The Incredible Rise of Urban Real Estate

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, urban and suburban homes in the U.S. used to be worth about the same on a per-square foot basis. But since the mid-2000s, urban homes have been worth more per square foot. Today, as a fascinating new report from Zillow on the shifting geography of American home values explores, urban homes nationwide are now valued at roughly 25 percent more than suburban ones on a per-square foot basis ($198 versus $156 per square foot).

What’s more, by the end of 2015, the average value of an urban home exceeded that of its suburban counterparts by 2 percent ($269,036 compared to $263,987). As the chart below shows, this overturns a long-held pattern of suburban homes having higher values than homes in urban areas—and this despite the fact that suburban homes tend to be considerably larger than urban ones.