Home Costs in the 1960s

Title: What Did a Home Cost in the 1950s?

Description: A comparison of housing prices from 1950s to modern day.

Category: Housing prices, Inflation, household income, home sizes

SEO: Housing prices, Inflation, household income, home sizes

What Did a Home Cost in the 1950s?

According to U.S. Census data, the national median price of a single-family detached home in 1950 was a jaw-dropping $7,354. That’s about $97,740 in today’s dollars. But the average house in 1950 was much smaller: 983 square feet and an average of 4.6 total rooms, as opposed to 2,264 square feet and seven to eight rooms today. The average family income was $3,300, the equivalent of $43,859 today, which demonstrates how much the housing market has outpaced regular inflation.

Though the value of the average home in 1950 equates to $97,740 today, data from 2018 to 2022 shows the modern-day median home value is almost triple that, at $281,900. The price of a home in 1950 was approximately double the median household income. The price of a home is now nearly four times the median household income.

The development of the Interstate Highway System with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 made the areas surrounding cities more easily accessible than ever before. (Note: President Dwight Eisenhower helped pass this act as a matter of national security. If America was ever invaded, he wanted a highway system in which could transport American troops quickly to any part of the country.)

This, along with the wide availability of empty land for developers to build on, and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation discouraging mortgage lending for central urban properties by identifying those areas as “hazardous,” contributed to the creation of the suburbs as we know them. By 1960, 15 million U.S. homes were under construction, and 75% of them were in suburban areas. 

The median single-family home size in 1960 rose to 1,500 square feet and gradually increased throughout the decade to just under 2,000 square feet. The median number of rooms increased from the 1950s average of 4.6 to six rooms in the 1960s, and that number held steady throughout the decade. It’s tempting to attribute the increased home size to the space that was available in the suburbs, but the numbers don’t exactly bear out that explanation: The median lot size throughout the 1950s and ’60s was steady at just over .20 acres, and it didn’t significantly increase until the 1970s.

As home sizes increased, so too did home prices: In 1960, the median value of a single-family detached home was $11,900 — that’s $126,852 today. However, the median family income kept pace, increasing to $5,600 ($59,695 today), so the median annual family income still comprised approximately half the cost of a home. The least expensive state for home ownership was Arkansas, with a median home value of $6,700, while the most expensive state was Hawaii, with a median home value of $20,900 — or $71,4210 and $222,790 today, respectively.

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  Frank Victoria is an award-winning author and screenwriter. He’s been an Amazon bestseller with his recent book, The Founders’ Plot, a political thriller for our times. He donates proceeds of his books to Tunnels to Towers and Fisher House, helping military veterans and first responders. His novella, The Ultimate Bet is available on his website and Amazon. Check out his new website: FrankVictoriaAuthor.com