The federal government has tracked repeat sales of the same houses in these four counties for as long as five decades, which makes its price index the longest honest record of what a house here has done. Measured from 1990, the four counties have multiplied home values by 2.68x to 3.20x.
The order surprises people. The fastest is Hampshire, the college corridor. The slowest is Hampden, the county holding Springfield, the region's largest city. The gap between them is not the pandemic, and it is not the 2008 crash, which the counties went through roughly together. It is the early 1990s.
The Slide Nobody Talks About
From 1990 to 1995, Hampden County posted 6 consecutive years of falling prices, a fall of about 17% peak to trough, the deepest in the region's record, and the 1989 level did not return until 2001. The other counties dipped in the same years and came out sooner and shallower. Everyone remembers 2008, and the longest unbroken run of declines here actually belongs to Berkshire County after it, seven years. But the early-90s bust cut deepest where the region's biggest city is, and it is most of the reason the big-city county trails over the long run.
Hampshire and Hampden Counties on One Base, 1990 to 2025
Hampshire CountyHampden County
3.20xHampshire County's multiple of its 1990 level. Hover to read any year.
Both lines are indexed to 100 in 1990, so the vertical gap is the cumulative difference. The lines run close until the mid-1990s, separate there, and never quite close again.
Every County, Three Windows
The record reaches back further than 1990 in three of the four counties, to 1975 in the earliest, but the counties joined the index in different years, so multiples from each county's own start are not comparable and are not shown. From the shared base years:
The Price Index by County, Multiples From Shared Base Years
Download CSV, same columns, same definitions
The FHFA all-transactions house price index for each county, expressed as a multiple of its level in 1990, 2000 and 2019, with the longest run of consecutive annual declines in each county's record.
| County | Since 1990 | Since 2000 | Since 2019 | Longest Slide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berkshire | 2.77x | 2.73x | 1.65x | 7 years, 2008 to 2014 |
| Franklin | 3.12x | 2.82x | 1.67x | 6 years, 1990 to 1995 |
| Hampden | 2.68x | 2.69x | 1.60x | 6 years, 1990 to 1995 |
| Hampshire | 3.20x | 2.81x | 1.57x | 5 years, 1990 to 1994 |
What These Columns Mean
- County
- One of the four western counties. The index covers single family transactions in that county.
- Since 1990
- The index now as a multiple of its 1990 level. 3.00x means values tripled.
- Since 2000
- The index now as a multiple of its 2000 level.
- Since 2019
- The index now as a multiple of its 2019 level, the pre-pandemic base.
- Longest Slide
- The county's longest run of consecutive annual declines in the record, and the years it ran.
Cite: RE413. “The Price Index by County, Multiples From Shared Base Years.” Updated September 16, 2026. https://www.re413.com/news/home-price-history-western-mass/, underlying sources at https://www.re413.com/sources/.
What This Does Not Mean
An index is not a price. It says what happened to the value of the same houses trading over time, not what any house costs; the medians by town carry the dollar figures. A county is also a wide brush: Hampshire County contains both a university city and hilltowns, and the index averages across them.
Nor does a slow long run mean a bad market now. The pandemic years moved all four counties together, and what fifty years of prices say about timing takes up whether any of it argues for waiting. The quarter-by-quarter record of what actually sold is the short-run companion to this page.
Sources
- Federal Housing Finance Agency. The all-transactions house price index by county, annually, 1975 to 2025.
"Figures through" is the period the publisher's data describes; "checked" is only when we last asked. The full sourcing: sources and method.