Free U.S. Housing Data — The Comparison

If you're researching the U.S. housing market and you don't want a subscription, this is the honest map. Five free sources (including ours) and three commercial tools people ask about, with the features that actually matter for decision-making. First a live sample straight out of the build and a JSON API you can call without an account, then the feature matrix.

Market data as of May 31, 2026 (the Redfin period these numbers describe) Pipeline last rebuilt July 30, 2026 (when the files were regenerated — a different date)

See it right now

Most "free data" pages are a list of links. This one shows the data. Everything in this section is read out of the published files at build time, the same files the API serves.

Ten states, straight from the index file

First ten state-level rows, alphabetical, from /data/states/index.json, except the price-cut column, which is not in the index file and is read per state from current.priceDropPct. Market data as of May 31, 2026.
State Median sale price Median household income Price-to-income Days on market Price cuts (% of listings)
Alabama $312,600 $62,027 5.04x 57 24.7%
Alaska $427,100 $89,336 4.78x 22 26.8%
Arizona $453,800 $76,872 5.90x 62 30.9%
Arkansas $275,500 $58,773 4.69x 53 26.0%
California $887,400 $96,334 9.21x 33 26.1%
Colorado $617,000 $92,470 6.67x 35 33.9%
Columbia $740,000 — — 47 26.6%
Connecticut $498,000 $93,760 5.31x 31 18.6%
Delaware $384,500 $82,855 4.64x 33 28.8%
Florida $421,500 $71,711 5.88x 66 28.5%

The District of Columbia ships in the index as "Columbia" and has no ACS income join in this build, so its income and price-to-income cells are em dashes rather than zeros. That is the guard working, not a rendering bug. Price-to-income is median sale price divided by median household income; price cuts is Redfin's share of active listings where the seller has reduced the asking price.

The national row

National figures for May 31, 2026, deduplicated, from /data/national/index.json. Each of those series ships 60 rows covering 30 month-end dates — every month appears exactly twice, with different values, so we keep the later row for each date before reading or charting anything. Anyone rebuilding this from the raw file and getting a sawtooth has hit the same thing. The 30-year rate is Freddie Mac's PMMS survey, read from FRED series MORTGAGE30US, which is why it carries a weekly date rather than a month-end one.

Median sale price$440,411
Homes sold432,015
Active inventory1,397,071
Days on market50.0
Listings with a price cut20.0%
Sale-to-list ratio98.6%
30-yr fixed average6.58%week ending July 23, 2026

Or take it from the API

No key, no signup, no auth header. CORS is open, so it works from a browser too.

curl -s -H 'User-Agent: my-app (me@example.com)' \
  https://homestats.app/api/states/index.json \
| jq '.states[0] | {name, medianPrice, medianIncome, valueToIncome, daysOnMarket}'

Returns:

{
  "name": "Alabama",
  "medianPrice": 312600,
  "medianIncome": 62027,
  "valueToIncome": 5.04,
  "daysOnMarket": 57
}
  • /api/index.json — discovery: endpoints, field list, limits
  • /api/states/index.json — every state-level row in one file
  • /api/states/{slug}.json — the full per-state dataset
  • /api/states/{slug}/places.json — counties and top cities for a state

Please send a User-Agent with contact info and cache what you fetch. The published ceiling is 60 requests per minute and 600 per hour per IP; those two figures are published by the API itself, under rateLimits in /api/index.json, which is the copy to trust if it ever disagrees with this page. Attribution terms are on the Fair Use page.

The matrix

Source Cost Coverage Signup API Per-State Pages Tax Modeling Veteran / VA Wage History Calculators
HomeStats Free 51 states · 3,073 counties · 18,052 cities · 925 metros · 16,386 ZIPs — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Zillow Research Free Varies by dataset — partner ✓ — — — —
Redfin Data Center Free Varies by dataset — — ✓ — — — —
FRED (St. Louis Fed) Free Varies by series optional ✓ limited — — partial —
Census Bureau Free Varies by table — ✓ ✓ — — partial —
Reventure App Free tier + paid subscription — see their pricing page See their site ✓ — ✓ — — — limited
Mashvisor Paid subscription — see their pricing page See their site ✓ paid investor-only — — — investor
Roofstock Free to browse / commission on transactions See their site ✓ — — — — — —

The HomeStats coverage cell is a count computed at build time from /data/meta.json, which is served raw so you can check it. The other coverage cells are descriptions, not measurements. Geography differs per dataset at every one of these publishers, and we are not going to assert a count for someone else's catalog. Cost cells for the commercial tools carry no dollar figures because their pricing pages render client-side and we could not verify a tier from a server fetch. Reventure's own pricing page titles its paid tier "Premium" and it also has a free tier; we link the page rather than restate a number. Check their pricing page yourself. Feature cells for other publishers are our reading of their public product as of this build, not a claim they make.

Free equivalents, one click away

If you landed here wanting one specific number rather than a catalog, these are the free pages that answer it. Each one prints its formula and its filter.

Price forecasts with confidence bands

Five-year median-price projection per state with a ±1σ band and a published one-year hindcast error, so you can see how wrong the method was last time.

Price-to-income and price-to-rent

The overvaluation question, answered with a printed formula and a disclosed denominator instead of a proprietary score.

Share of listings with a price cut

Redfin’s price-drop field on its own, by state and by high-volume county. No composite, no weighting.

Buyer’s market vs seller’s market

Months of supply against the NAR and Redfin 3-and-6-month convention, plus inventory surplus versus each region’s own long-term average.

How the scoring works and what we deliberately did not model: crash-risk methodology and the glossary and method notes. Feature-by-feature against the best-known paid alternative: HomeStats vs Reventure.

Pick by use case

I want raw price/rent index data

Zillow Research (ZHVI/ZORI) and Redfin Data Center. Both free, both authoritative.

I want macro time series (rates, unemployment, starts)

FRED. Best free API in the country for economic time series.

I want demographic and migration data

Census Bureau ACS + IRS SOI for migration. Free, official, slow to update.

I want decision-grade per-state pages with tax math

HomeStats. We synthesize the four sources above plus VA, EPA, FEMA, BLS, BEA into one page per state.

I want video commentary + bear-case analysis

Reventure (Nick Gerli) on YouTube + X. Free YouTube, paid app for deep data.

I want investor-grade SFR + Airbnb numbers

Mashvisor (paid). HomeStats covers the macro context for free; Mashvisor is the property-level layer.

Questions people actually ask

Where can I get free U.S. housing market data?

Five of the sources on this page cost nothing and need no subscription: Zillow Research (ZHVI and ZORI download files), Redfin Data Center (the market TSVs this site is built on), FRED at the St. Louis Fed (mortgage rates and macro series), the U.S. Census Bureau (ACS income, population and housing units), and HomeStats. The first four are primary sources. HomeStats is the synthesis layer on top of them and cites every one. The build's own manifest, data/meta.json, declares 17 upstream datasets, all listed and linked on this page. That manifest is not the complete register — Zillow ZORI and IRS SOI migration are read by the pipeline and do not appear in it — so the full per-field list is on the /sources/ page.

Is there a free housing data API?

Yes. HomeStats publishes read-only JSON with no key, no signup and no auth header: /api/index.json for discovery, /api/states/index.json for every state-level row, /api/states/{slug}.json for a full state file, and /api/states/{slug}/places.json for a state’s counties and top cities. CORS is open (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *). Send a User-Agent with contact info and cache what you get. The published ceiling is 60 requests per minute and 600 per hour per IP. Use is free with attribution; the terms are on the Fair Use page.

Can I use HomeStats data commercially?

The underlying data is public (Redfin, FRED, FHFA, Census, BLS and the rest of the sources listed on this page), and the analysis, scoring and derived ratios on top of it are our own work. Attribution requirements and how to link back are on the Fair Use page. Read that page before republishing; we do not restate license terms here, and we do not grant terms the upstream publishers have not granted.

How often is the data updated?

The pipeline rebuilds weekly, on a Thursday cron. The build currently published ran on July 30, 2026, and the Redfin market period it carries is May 31, 2026. Those two dates are different on purpose: Redfin publishes completed months, so the newest market figures always trail the build by a few weeks. Rate data is fresher: the 30-year average on this page is 6.58%, week ending July 23, 2026.

The 17 upstream datasets declared in the build manifest

Read straight out of /data/meta.json, which the pipeline writes on every run and which is served raw. If a number on this site is wrong, it is either our arithmetic or one of these files, and you can check both. This manifest is the pipeline's own declaration, not the complete register: Zillow ZORI (the rent series) and IRS SOI migration are read by the build and are not in it. The full per-field provenance list, including those two, is on the sources page below.

Full source register with per-field provenance: /sources/.

If you only use one

Use the source that matches your job. We're biased toward our own — HomeStats per-state pages + /api/states/index.json — because the synthesis layer doesn't exist anywhere else for free. But Redfin, Zillow Research, FRED, and Census are the underlying data we (and everyone serious) builds on. Cite them.