Richard (Ryszard) Cieplechowicz
A ZIP-area home value median looks precise. That does not make it a current asking price, a sale price or an appraisal for a particular house.
My owner-occupied home value dataset uses the Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates for 132 selected ZIP Code Tabulation Areas in the Tampa Bay area. The values are reported by owners. They are not a record of completed sales.
Two Census tables answer different questions. B25077 supplies the median owner-occupied value and its published 90% margin of error. B25075 supplies counts within value bands. One gives a middle point; the other shows how the estimated homes are spread out.
Across the selected areas, the band counts total an estimated 902,658 owner-occupied units. An estimated 214,053, or 23.7%, fall in bands of $500,000 or more. That share describes the selected units. It is not the value of a typical house or a complete statistic for every county address.
For a useful comparison, read the median beside its margin of error, then look at the bands. Do not average several ZIP-area medians and call the result a metro median. These figures describe different populations, and an average of their middle points is not the middle point of the combined population.
The geography has limits too. Census ZCTAs and USPS delivery ZIPs differ. The study assigns each selected ZCTA to a county using its largest land-area share; a ZCTA can still cross county lines. It does not cover every address in the four counties.
The figures can help describe an area's housing stock. They cannot tell you what one home would sell for today. For that, you need current evidence about comparable properties and the home itself.
Study, methods and free CSV:
https://richardcieplechowicz.com/tampa-bay-owner-home-values-by-zcta-2020-2024/
Archived dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23114338
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2020-2024 five-year estimates.Read the study and download the data
