{"id":35088,"date":"2025-02-05T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zoocasa.com\/blog\/?p=35088"},"modified":"2025-02-18T12:09:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T17:09:22","slug":"best-air-quality-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zoocasa.com\/blog\/best-air-quality-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Cities with the Best (and Worst) Air Quality\u2014And What It Means for Home Prices\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Approximately 140 million people lived in counties with unhealthy air pollution levels in 2023, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)<\/a>. The potential damages of air pollution are widespread, from reduced crop yields to increased risk for heart disease, making cities with healthy air quality more desirable to live in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As wildfires<\/a> and flooding<\/a> become more frequent, contributing to poor air quality, the search for a healthy place to live becomes more compelling. But is worsening air quality having any impact on home price growth? Conversely, are cities with the best air quality seeing more demand? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using data from the EPA Air Quality Index Report<\/a>, Zoocasa analyzed air quality across the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S. for 2024. We quantified the air quality by counting the number of days classified as \u201cgood\u201d (healthy) and those grouped as \u201cunhealthy\u201d (including days unhealthy for sensitive groups, days unhealthy, and days very unhealthy). Days categorized as moderate were not included in this analysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This air quality data was then correlated with median home prices from the National Association of Realtors and analyzed for price growth over one-year and five-year periods to assess how air quality may influence housing market trends.<\/p>\n\n\n