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 affluent Montecito, which are wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains, space for new construction is limited, and zoning restrictions are extremely tight, making some of the area’s oldest homes its most coveted, explains Amanda Lee, a real estate agent with The Agency.

“These older homes just have a character that you can’t replicate,” says Lee. “Celebrities love to come in and live amongst these homes that have an old-world charm and glamor about them.”

The Montecito area is home to Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, as well as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

Lee recently listed a Santa Barbara mansion built in 1922 and designed by Reginald Davis Johnson, one of the area’s most notable architects. The four-bedroom, 5,058-square-foot Spanish Colonial went through a historic restoration and expansion in the ’90s and is now listed for $9.6 million.

“It’s rare to see a home like this come on the market,” says Lee. “They’re really sought after, and the fact that somebody can really just move in, and not have to do any remodeling, is pretty special.”

On the East Coast, Massachusetts has the most valuable stock of pre-war homes. The typical home built before 1940 in the Bay State is worth $591,200, compared with the overall state median of $570,800.

Older homes on Cape Cod might be a major driver of the trend. In Barnstable Town, the official name of the statistical area encompassing Cape Cod, the older homes are typically worth $786,700, a 24% bump from the median value.

Boston and Amherst also follow the trend, though with smaller differences in value between older and newer homes.

Following California, Florida is the state with the most local areas where older homes are more valuable than the typical home.

Florida has 10 metro areas where the trend is observed, including Panama City, where pre-1940 homes are worth 123% more than the local median, and the Naples-Marco Island area, where the gap is 73%.

Farther along the Gulf Shore, the gap between pre- and post-war homes is also large in Louisiana. The typical Louisiana home built before 1940 is worth $286,900, which is 33% more than the statewide median.

In New Orleans, well-known for its historic homes in and around the French Quarter, the median-priced pre-1940 home is worth 76% more than the local standard.

Indeed, many of the cities where older homes are the most valuable have well-preserved historic downtown cores, where the oldest homes sit on the city’s most prime real estate.

“In the states and metros where homes built prior to 1940 are valued higher than the median home, the primary driver for this difference is primarily location,” says Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner. “As cities expand, newer builds tend to be larger and situated on more land, but farther from the city centers where factors like walkability and vibrancy lend an advantage to older homes in more central neighborhoods.”

Berner says this is particularly true in cities such as Boston and New Orleans that have made an effort to preserve the character of historical neighborhoods, and also in areas that have a geographic feature like a beach that proximity to makes a home more desirable.

The trend holds in both Anchorage, AK, and Honolulu, where pre-1940 homes are not only more valuable than the median home, but also more valuable than even the newest homes built since 2020.

In Anchorage, pre-war homes, which are mostly clustered near the city’s historic core, are typically worth $797,500, which is 115% more than the median home value and 52% more than homes built since 2020.

On the island of Honolulu, homes built before 1940 are mostly located either in downtown Urban Honolulu or along the island’s prime beachfronts.

They are typically worth $1.08 million, which is 21% more than the overall median and 16% more than homes built this decade.

“Homes built before 1940 that are still around today are around for a reason, usually that they have some sort of historical preservation attached to them or that they’re in the most desirable part of a city,” says Berner.