Recovery Riches: The U.S. Housing Market Gained $11 Trillion in Value in the 2010s – Zillow Research
- The combined value of every residential home in the United States was $33.6 trillion at the end of 2019, up 3.4% ($1.1 trillion) from a year ago and 51% ($11.3 trillion) from the start of the decade.
- The total value of the U.S. housing stock is almost equal to the combined 2018 GDPs of the U.S.A. (~$20.5 trillion) and China (~$13.6 trillion), by far the world’s two largest national economies.
- Over the past decade, California’s housing stock grew in value by more than $3.1 trillion, by far the largest such growth of any single state – and comfortably more than the combined total of the next four states on the list.
The combined value of every residential home in the United States is a staggering $33.6 trillion – almost equal to the combined 2018 GDPs of the U.S.A. (~$20.5 trillion) and China (~$13.6 trillion), by far the world’s two largest national economies. If all the 2,200+ billionaires in the world (as of 2018) were to pool their assets, their paltry $9.1 trillion in wealth couldn’t even buy a third of the nation’s homes.
Over the past year, between the end of 2018 and the end of 2019, the total value of every residential property in the country grew by 3.4%, or approximately $1.1 trillion – a sum higher than the entire 2018 GDP of all but 15 nations. But the real story may be in measuring the difference a decade can make: Between 2010 and the end of 2019, the total value of all U.S. homes grew 51%, or $11.3 trillion.
In 2010, the U.S. housing market was struggling to regain its footing in the wake of one of the largest economic and housing downturns on record. But a decade of economic recovery marked by low unemployment, low interest rates and a near-tripling of the Dow Jones Industrial Average contributed widespread home value growth. Of course, the U.S. housing market is really just a collection of state and regional markets, with some states and metro areas contributing more to the overall value and growth of the U.S. housing stock, and some contributing far less.