WASHINGTON — If you could write a check for $975.12 billion, you could own every house, condo and co-op in the Washington metro, making Washington the fourth most-valuable residential real estate market in the country.
That is the total value of all homes in the Washington region, according to real estate firm Zillow. It is also $27.1 billion, or 2.9 percent more than the total value of all residential real estate in Washington at the end of 2015.
Despite the gain in combined value, Zillow says it is still just below what it was during the peak bubble years of the U.S. housing market.
Nationwide, the combined, total value of every home in the United States is now $29.6 trillion, up 5.7 percent from a year ago and a new record.
Zillow says the total value of all homes in the U.S. is more than the GDP of the United States and China combined.
To further put that nearly $30 trillion figure in perspective, Zillow says Bill Gates, America’s wealthiest individual, would have to find 399 equally wealthy people to pool their resources together to be able to afford to buy every home in the United States.
The total value of residential real estate in the United States is more than the entire 2015 market capitalization of every single U.S. publicly traded company combined.
Los Angeles is the nation’s most valuable residential real estate market, with a total combined value of $2.5 trillion — more than double the combined wealth of America’s 50 richest individuals.
The total value of the New York metro’s housing market is just under $2.4 trillion — equal to the GDP of France.
San Francisco rounds out the top three most valuable, with a combined housing value of almost $1.3 trillion — about the same as the total amount expected to be spend on the F-35 fighter jet program.
Washington comes in behind San Francisco. Rounding out the top 10 most-valuable U.S. metro housing markets are Miami, Chicago, Boston, San Jose, San Diego and Philadelphia.
Housing in the top 10 markets checks in with a combined value of $11.2 trillion, about a third of the entire national sum.
