Is the Price Right? Americans Underestimate Home Prices

Seventy-two percent of Americans underestimate housing prices in their city, according to a survey conducted by All Star Home.

Whether buying or just browsing, it can be a fun game to guess the value of homes in nearby neighborhoods. In fact, 65% of those surveyed admitted to trying to guess the price of a home when passing by one for sale. About 1 in 3 look up home prices in their area at least monthly, and boomers (36%) are most likely to look up home prices, followed by millennials (30%), Gen X (28%) and Gen Z (22%).

To find out how good Americans are at guessing home prices, All Star Home asked survey participants to guess the prices of three homes in their own cities. Guesses were scored for accuracy, with more points being deducted for further deviation from the actual price of the home. Each city was then ranked on a 100-point scale for how accurate their residents were at guessing home prices in the area.

The cities with the best property value intuition are San Fransisco, Las Vegas and Fort Worth, while the cities with the worst are Chicago, Charlotte and Dallas (which were also the top three cities for underestimating prices). Of the 29 biggest cities, Philadelphia placed 21st with an intuition score of 33.33.

Other cities, such as El Paso, Oklahoma City and Forth Worth, had a tendency to overestimate the price of their homes.

Still, whether underestimating or overestimating property values, 86% found themselves surprised by the true price of the homes they guessed on. Boomers were most surprised by home prices in their cities (91%), followed by millennials (87%), Gen X (85%) and Gen Z (84%).