Where every number comes from

Properties Incorporated publishes no proprietary estimates. Every figure on the site originates with one of five providers — Zillow Research, Redfin, the U.S. Census Bureau, NCES, and FRED — and each one is named on the page where its number appears. This page lists what we take from each provider, how many locations it covers, how often it refreshes, and where to read that provider’s own terms. Four of the five still update. One does not, and we say so.

22,712

Cities covered

30,888

ZIP codes covered

States & territories

165,552

Schools mapped

Counts are read live from our database each time this page rebuilds, not typed in by hand.

Freshness at a glance

Provider refresh cadence and latest loaded period
Provider	Status
Zillow Research	Zillow, August 2026
Redfin Data Center	Redfin, through May 2026
U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey	U.S. Census ACS, 2023
NCES — National Center for Education Statistics	NCES
FRED — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis	Freddie Mac via FRED, September 2026

One provider stopped publishing

Redfin stopped publishing public market trackers in June 2026; latest available period is May 2026.

The five providers

Zillow Research

Home values and rents

Zillow, August 2026

What we take

ZHVI — Zillow Home Value Index, the typical home value for the 35th–65th percentile of the local housing stock
ZORI — Zillow Observed Rent Index, the repeat-listing weighted mean asking rent
Historical monthly series going back to 2000 for the price chart on every city and ZIP page

Coverage: 22,712 cities · 30,888 ZIP codes · 52 states and territories
Cadence: Monthly
Licence: Zillow publishes its research data files for public use with attribution. We link back to Zillow Research on every page that renders a ZHVI or ZORI figure and never present the index as our own estimate.
Why we use it: Zillow is the only free national source that still refreshes monthly and covers the entire housing stock rather than only the homes that sold. It is now our lead series wherever both Zillow and Redfin figures exist.

Provider data page ↗Zillow Terms of Use ↗

Redfin Data Center

Closed-transaction metrics

Redfin, through May 2026

What we take

Median sale price, median list price, and median price per square foot
Days on market, sale-to-list ratio, and share of listings with a price drop
Active inventory, new listings, homes sold, and months of supply
Year-over-year change on the price series

Coverage: 22,712 cities · 30,888 ZIP codes · 52 states and territories
Cadence: Stopped in June 2026
Licence: Redfin published its market-tracker files for free public use with attribution, permitting reuse of the aggregated statistics. We attribute Redfin wherever these figures appear and link to the Data Center.
Why we use it: Redfin's tracker was the only free public record of what actually closed at city and ZIP granularity. Nothing free has replaced it, so we kept the historical series and labelled it rather than deleting the only transaction data available.

Provider data page ↗Redfin Terms of Use ↗

U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey

Demographics and income

U.S. Census ACS, 2023

What we take

Population, households, median age, and one-year population growth
Median household income — the denominator in every affordability sentence on the site
Owner-occupied share, vacancy rate, median home value, and median gross rent
Bachelor's-degree attainment and median commute time

Coverage: Cities, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, and states — used for the income-to-price and affordability context on market pages
Cadence: Yearly
Licence: U.S. Census Bureau data is a work of the United States federal government and is in the public domain. It is free to use, redistribute, and republish. We pull it through the official Census API.
Why we use it: Income is the missing half of every affordability question. A $400,000 median price means something completely different in a market with a $60,000 median household income than in one at $120,000.

Provider data page ↗Census API Terms of Service ↗

NCES — National Center for Education Statistics

Public school directory

NCES

What we take

School name, type, and level (elementary, middle, high, other)
Grade range served and total enrollment
Physical location, used to attach schools to the correct city or ZIP page

Coverage: 165,552 public schools mapped to their location
Cadence: Yearly
Licence: The Common Core of Data is published by the U.S. Department of Education and is in the public domain. Free to use and redistribute with attribution to NCES.
Why we use it: We publish the factual school directory — which schools exist, what grades they serve, how many students attend — and nothing more. We do not publish or compute school quality ratings, rankings, or scores, because those figures correlate heavily with neighbourhood demographics and using them to characterise an area is exactly the kind of steering the Fair Housing Act prohibits.

Provider data page ↗NCES site policies ↗

FRED — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Rates and national indicators

Freddie Mac via FRED, September 2026

What we take

MORTGAGE30US and MORTGAGE15US — Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey averages, the default rate in every calculator
MSPUS — median sales price of houses sold in the United States
CSUSHPISA — S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index
HOUST and PERMIT — housing starts and building permits
RHORUSQ156N — U.S. homeownership rate
Per-state Zillow home value series (the UCSFRCONDOSMSAMID family)

Coverage: National and state-level series — 42 series currently loaded
Cadence: Weekly for rates, monthly or quarterly for the rest
Licence: FRED aggregates series from federal agencies and private providers. Federal series are public domain; some third-party series carry the originating provider's terms. We use only series FRED marks as freely redistributable and cite both FRED and the originating publisher.
Why we use it: The mortgage rate is the single biggest lever on affordability. A one-point move changes the monthly payment on a $400,000 loan by roughly $250. Every calculator on this site opens at 7.03% for the week ending September 24, 2026, straight from this series.

Provider data page ↗FRED Terms of Use ↗

What we deliberately do not use

No licensed MLS feed. We are not a brokerage and hold no MLS membership. Everything here comes from files each provider publishes openly, which is why our figures lag a local agent's live MLS view and occasionally differ from it.
No school quality ratings, rankings, or scores. We publish the NCES factual directory only. Rating-style school scores track neighbourhood demographics closely, and using them to describe an area is the kind of steering the Fair Housing Act prohibits.
No crime data, and no neighbourhood 'safety' scoring. Same reason. We describe housing data, not the people who live somewhere.
No proprietary AVM or price forecast. We do not model, estimate, or predict prices. Where you see a home value it is Zillow's published index, attributed to Zillow.
No purchased consumer data or third-party data brokers. Every pipeline pulls directly from the provider's own published endpoint or file.

Citing this data

You are welcome to cite our pages. Two requests, both aimed at keeping the provenance chain intact:

Cite the specific market page the figure appears on, not the homepage — the homepage carries no city-level number and cannot support the claim.
Carry the original provider forward. “Median sale price of $613,000 (Redfin, May 2026, via Properties Incorporated)” is right; attributing the number to us alone is not.

For bulk access, licensing, or a research collaboration, email us through the contact page. The full metric definitions live on the methodology page, and Zillow’s series is currently loaded through August 2026.

Want these numbers for a specific market?

Tell us the city you're tracking and your timeline. We'll send the current brief — values, rents, and what the transaction data still shows for that market.