The Long Price Memory
Fifty years of county house prices, and what a purchase made in any past year tracks to today.
Four Counties, One Path, Rebased to 1990
1990 = 100 for every county (their records begin in different years: Hampden's in 1975, Franklin's in 1985, so the chart runs on the span all four share). Nominal: a flat line through the 90s was a real-terms decline.
Berkshire County · 1980 to 2025
720index, 1980 = 100
Franklin County · 1985 to 2025
534index, 1985 = 100
Hampden County · 1975 to 2025
1339index, 1975 = 100
Hampshire County · 1978 to 2025
1108index, 1978 = 100
Carry a Purchase Forward
A $230,000 purchase tracking Hampshire County's average path from 2004 lands near $448,000 in 2025: nominal dollars, no inflation adjustment. An index follows the county's repeat sales, not any particular house: condition, renovation and street are invisible to it. Not an appraisal.
The Milestones, County by County
Berkshire County records since 1980
×2.8 since 1990 · ×2.7 since 2000 · the bust took −11% (2007→2012) · +64.8% since 2019, nominal, before inflation.
Franklin County records since 1985
×3.1 since 1990 · ×2.8 since 2000 · the bust took −13.3% (2006→2012) · +67% since 2019, nominal, before inflation.
Hampden County records since 1975
×2.7 since 1990 · ×2.7 since 2000 · the bust took −15.2% (2007→2012) · +60.3% since 2019, nominal, before inflation.
Hampshire County records since 1978
×3.2 since 1990 · ×2.8 since 2000 · the bust took −10.6% (2007→2012) · +57.2% since 2019, nominal, before inflation.
What sold last quarter, town by town, is on What Just Sold, this page is its fifty-year memory.
Reading This Honestly
- Nominal dollars. No inflation adjustment anywhere on this page, a 90s flatline was a real-terms loss.
- The herd, not your house. A repeat-sales index nets out the county's average path; condition, renovation and street are invisible to it. Never an appraisal.
- County grain, towns inside a county diverge, and the index cannot see it.
- The newest year is provisional until the source's annual revision.
From the Desk
RE413 News on this subject: what fifty years of prices say about timing. Every piece is built from the same public record as the figures above, and states the period each covers.
Sources
- Federal house-price index (county, all-transactions), full annual history. Figures through 2025. Checked 2026-08-05.
"Figures through" is the period the publisher's data describes; "checked" is only when we last asked. The full sourcing: sources and method.