As the real estate market has heated up and home prices have risen, homebuyers have been faced with an old dilemma. Is it better to buy a home just built by a contractor or an existing home? Presumably, many people make their decisions based on their preferences just as much as a home’s age. Additionally, some cities have many more old homes than others, which means inventory by age, by city, can be a determining factor.

Lending Tree has ranked the major housing markets by the percentage of homes built before 1939, the close of the Great Depression, in each one. It looked at the nation’s top 50 markets.

It is no surprise that eastern cities that had large populations a century ago dominate the list. Some have become smaller since then. Boston, among the oldest large cities in America, ranked first with 33.19% of homes built during or before 1939. The city has a total of 1,958,465 such units.

Second is a city that has not aged well, as many of its core businesses have left or closed in the past several decades. Providence, Rhode Island, has 31.38% of its homes built before 1939, and it has 703,610 housing units.

The third-place city definitely has lost population since the middle of the last century. In Buffalo, New York, 31.33% of its homes were built before 1939. There are 528,735 housing units there in all.

By contrast, at the far end of the list, Las Vegas has only 0.39% of its total 899,870 homes built during or before 1939. Of course, the city was not incorporated until 1910.

Click here to read about the grandest historic mansion in each state.

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