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Midwest affordability has outlasted a century of U.S. home price cycles

9/8/2026

American home prices have changed dramatically over the past hundred years.

Against that backdrop, the Midwest has held its position as a bastion of affordability, with one city in the region maintaining a place among the most affordable in the country for more than 134 years.

A span of that length covers multiple generations of buyers and multiple turns in the national housing cycle.

The Midwest's sustained position at the affordable end of the American market across the full century reads as structural rather than episodic. The macro caveat stands regardless.