The Most Popular and Valuable House Styles in the U.S. | AHS (2024)

The Ranch House is America’s Most Commonly Sold Home

Ranch-style housing is the most popular across 20 states. This American classic was built insuch quantitiesin the mid-twentieth century that it prevails through sheer force. The ranch house offers space and, occupying just one floor, cradle-to-grave accessibility. Plus, it is plain enough to be affordable – and resalable.

This plain ranch style “was not experimental enough to be considered ‘ugly’ by even the most conservative,”wrote critic Russell Lynesat the time, “and it was not tricked-up enough to be considered ‘ugly’ by the experimental. It was merely ‘nice.’ It was ‘unobjectionable.’ It was ‘homey,’ and it was said to be ‘practical.’”

How Every State Bucks the House Style Trends

Next, we figured out the most ‘uniquely popular’ home style in each state by seeing which types stood out statistically from place to place. In Pennsylvania, the high number of Airlite-style homes sold is due to their commonness in PA cities such asPhiladelphia. An airlite is a terraced home that differs from the narrower “straight-through”rowhouseby positioning the kitchen and diner side-by-side. Since they make a good first home, airlites often come up on the market as young homeowners move onwards and upwards.

Sunnier climes encourage a more exotic approach to home design. Arizona is the only state with theTuscan styleas its most uniquely popular. Named after the dreamy Italian region, Tuscan-style homes take advantage of their natural surroundings. Architects favor local stone and timber for the structure, with terracotta and stucco details right at home in the warm climate. This outdoorsy feel segues into the actual outdoors with a prominent patio or portico.

Which House Style Draws Attention Near You?

Finally, we calculated the most uniquely popular home style in 45 big cities and shared it along with our state-wide data in the interactive table below. So, while Country Rustic is the ‘most Georgia’ style on a state level, the Atlanta market prefers the more urbanAmerican Foursquare– a no-nonsense, boxy family home that offers maximumroom spaceon its footprint.

Choosing a house style to build or buy is acomplex matter, as you weigh your own taste against the market’s preferences and the character of the neighborhood. But however you choose to proceed, there are a few good principles to stand by:

Seek advice from those you trust and filter voices that you don’t.

• Work as closely with your designer as you can without overstepping your level of expertise.
• Hold your contractors to high standards of engagement, value, and quality.
• Understand that the market can be volatile and unpredictable, and there’s no sure thing.

If you’re passionate about your project and can inspire your team (be they designers, contractors, orreal estate agents), you will get more out of the process than an anonymous investment.

METHODOLOGY & SOURCES

We pulled the data on Zillow’s sold listings across the United States using apify'sZillow Real Estate Scraper. Some states were omitted from our pricing research as they do not provide sold listings values to Zillow.

We filtered the data using the “Architectural Style” field and counted the most commonly sold styles in every state.

To calculate the most uniquely popular style in every city and state, we balanced the share of each style in the city/state to the share of that style country-wide and chose the figure with the highest ratio.

We then calculated the average price of each style state-wise and in the United States overall, including only the styles with at least 10 listings. To eliminate the impact of extreme values, we dropped 25% of listings with the highest prices and 25% with the lowest prices.

The data was collected in January 2022.