From the Victorian rowhouses facing the streets of San Francisco to the modern high-rises lining Chicago’s lakefront, the housing you’ll find in our Nation’s metropolitan areas comes in a variety of forms and ages.

This is one of a series of Briefs that uses data collected in the 1990 Census of Population and Housing to examine the characteristics of housing in America’s metropolitan areas (MA’s). This Brief looks specifically at two different structural characteristics – age (the proportion of homes that were either old or new) and type (the percentage there were single-family, mobile homes, and located in multiunit structures).

The MA’s used here correspond to the definitions that were in place in 1990. The count of 335 MA’s equals the total number of MSA’s (metropolitan statistical areas) and PMSA’s (primary metropolitan statistical areas).

PMSA’s are aggregated into consolidated metropolitan statistical areas, not discussed in this Brief.