Housing

How many ounces of gold buy a home?

Average house prices in 100 cities across North America, Europe and Australasia, each divided by that year's gold price in the same currency. A falling line means homes are getting cheaper measured in gold; a rising line means dearer.

Price of an average home, in troy ounces

Before August 1971 gold was fixed at US$35 under Bretton Woods, so early movements mostly reflect house prices and exchange rates. 2026 uses January–September averages. Dashed segments are back-cast from the national index before a city's own index begins.

Show the selected cities as a table

City ledger

Ounces of gold for an average home in the chosen year. Select a row to add that city to the chart.

Year 2026

How the figures are built

Each city starts from one published price level, the average or median sale price for its most recent period. That level is carried backwards and forwards with a house price index: S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller metro indices for the US cities, and otherwise the country's national residential property price index from the Bank for International Settlements (spliced to the Nationwide series before 1968 for the UK). Outside the US, the history before the anchor date therefore follows national rather than city trends.

Gold is the annual average of monthly US dollar prices per troy ounce (31.1035 g), converted at annual average exchange rates. Euro-area cities use euro-equivalent rates back to 1957, so legacy currencies such as the Irish pound and the French franc are folded in at their fixed conversion rates.

Where cities are not like-for-like

Many European sources publish a price per square metre rather than a price per home. For those cities the figure shown is the price of a 100 m² dwelling, marked m² × 100. Some figures cover apartments only, some houses only, some a metro region rather than the city, and a few come from estate agencies or listing portals rather than official bodies, marked non-official. Cities with no national index show the latest year only. Read cross-city gaps as indicative; the trend within each city is the more reliable reading.

Not included

City sources

Series sources

Capital Flows Atlas aggregates data published by the bodies listed above and does not stand over the accuracy of the source data. Charts describe past values only, contain no projections, and are not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Data compiled .