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These 10 large U.S. cities have the country's oldest homes

Century-old houses carry steep repair bills. Construction Coverage ranked the 10 major U.S. metro areas by the median age of their homes

Buyers touring open houses across much of the country are walking through rooms framed before their grandparents were born. Buy a house built in the first half of the 20th century and you inherit original wiring, cast-iron drain pipes, plaster walls, and a furnace decades past its prime. Plenty of households take that deal willingly, since an older house usually sells for less than anything newly built nearby, and the materials and craftsmanship often hold up better than what goes into a subdivision today. Owners pay for the discount later, in repair invoices and utility bills rather than at closing. American housing keeps getting older because the country isn't replacing it fast enough. A typical U.S. home had been standing 30 years at the turn of the century, and by 2024 the median age reached 43.

Owners of homes finished in 2022 or 2023 spend an average of $164 a year on routine maintenance, while owners of homes built before 1940 spend $1,615, or close to 10 times as much. Condition follows the same line, as 8.7% of pre-1940 homes are classified as inadequate against 0.3% of homes finished since 2022. The underbuilding behind the aging stock traces to the Great Recession, when construction firms shrank or shut down and never fully returned. That long drought in new supply left a national shortfall estimated at 1.5 million to 7.3 million units, and buyers absorbed the shortage in price, paying more than 23% above early 2020 levels for a typical home by the end of 2025. Regional differences are stark, since the median home in New York state has stood 65 years while the median in Nevada has stood 27 and in Arizona and Texas 30.

Construction Coverage set out to find where the aging of American housing has gone furthest, analyzing U.S. Census Bureau figures on when the nation's homes were built. Researchers used the Census Bureau's one-year American Community Survey data from 2024 to calculate a median home age across 387 metro areas, then grouped those metros by population so comparable-sized places were measured against each other. Small metros have fewer than 350,000 residents, midsize metros 350,000 to 999,999, and large metros at least 1 million. Ties went to whichever metro had the bigger share of homes standing before 1980. Every large metro in the ranking sits at least 13 years above the national median of 43.

Homes in the Buffalo-Cheektowaga metro area carry a median age of 66 years, the oldest housing stock among the large metros Construction Coverage measured. Half the houses in and around Buffalo, N.Y., went up before the late 1950s, leaving the typical property 23 years older than the national median of 43. Buffalo even runs older than its own state, and New York holds the highest statewide median in the country at 65 years. More than one in four houses across the metro date to 1939 or earlier, putting a large share of local inventory in the era before modern wiring, insulation, and central heating became standard.

Housing gets this old when nothing new arrives to pull the average down. The study ties the oldest housing stock to population trends, since the metros near the front of the ranking were once crowded, tightly built places whose head counts have stalled or fallen. Fewer arriving households means weaker demand for new subdivisions, and built-out neighborhoods leave little room for them anyway. Buffalo's supply of prewar and midcentury houses keeps aging year after year with no wave of construction to balance it.

The cost of living with housing this old shows up in upkeep. Owners of homes built before 1940 spend an average of $1,615 a year on routine maintenance, roughly 10 times the $164 that owners of houses finished in 2022 or 2023 pay. Condition tracks the same line, with 8.7% of pre-1940 homes rated inadequate against 0.3% of the newest stock. Buyers in Buffalo weigh those repair costs against a cheaper entry price. Older houses in the metro were built with sturdier lumber and more careful workmanship than much of what came later, but the furnace, the roof, the wiring, and the plumbing all arrive on a repair schedule the listing price never mentions.

Pittsburgh places second among large U.S. metros in the Construction Coverage study, with a median home age of 64 years. Half the metro's stock went up in 1960 or earlier, the Census Bureau figures behind the ranking show, and everything newer has accumulated across the six decades since. Pennsylvania's housing skews old by national standards at a statewide median of 58 years, and Pittsburgh runs six years older still. Against a national median of 43 years, the typical Pittsburgh house has stood roughly half again as long.

Metros with the oldest housing were once dense and heavily populated places, and many have seen growth stall or reverse in the decades since, so builders have had neither much open ground nor much reason to add inventory. Construction firms across the country shrank or closed during the Great Recession, and the long stretch of underbuilding that followed has left a national shortfall estimated at 1.5 million to........

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