Q3 Statistics Identify Best and Worst Housing Markets
Homeowners and potential homeowners everywhere, stand up and pay attention! A recent article in Forbes magazine provided a list of the best and worst housing markets in the United States, and the defining factor turned out to be, as the real estate saying goes, location, location, location.
With many factors driving down home prices nationally, including foreclosure, but that hasn't stopped specific areas across the country from enjoying local increases. Compared to third quarter statistics from last year, the National Association of Realtors reports that median home prices have risen 14.6 percent in Seattle, Washington; 14.3 percent in El Paso, Texas; and 12.3 percent in Portland, Oregon.
Similar numbers were posted along the Gulf Coast, in areas that were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. These positive trends featured an increase in median home prices of 15.5 percent in Gulfport-Biloxi, Mississippi; 14.1 percent in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and 7.6 percent in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Smaller changes of around 5 percent were felt in such locales as Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Austin, Texas; Jacksonville, Florida; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Though New York City metropolitan area as a whole experienced a modest growth of 3.6 percent, the five boroughs proper saw a drastic jump of 19 percent, double that of the previous year's growth.
However, the story for the rest of the country is one of gradual decreases. Nationwide, median home prices dropped 1.2 percent, according to the NAR, and the Northeast saw the worst of this drop, with a 4.8 percent dip throughout the region. A report of second-quarter statistics from the Case-Shiller/Standard & Poor's Home Price Index paints an even bleaker picture of an all-time low decline of 3.2 percent nationally.
The top three worst-performing markets, according to the NAR, experienced disastrous slides. The Detroit, Michigan metro area was hit for a 10.5% drop, while Miami, Florida and Indianapolis, Indiana both saw around 5% decreases.
The article tied performance of cities rate of job growth and net migration in the area. For instance, the poor numbers in the Northeast may be connected to the relatively poor growth in jobs, only 0.8 percent in comparison to the national rate of 1.3 percent. As a result, the Northeast also saw a migration rate of 4.6 percent that left the region than entered it.
The median prices in profitable areas also remained close to national averages through the housing boom in recent years, making them less susceptible to the adjustments felt throughout particularly hot markets. The article refers to statistics from 2004 to 2005 that median homes prices in many of the cities that are showing more stability, such as Austin and Charlotte, grew at slower rates than the national average.
Thus, when the market corrected itself, they did not experience as drastic a change in prices as a volatile market such as Miami, Florida. In Miami, the median home price exploded from $232,000 in 2003, to $391,000 at the end of 2005. The area is now seeing a downturn of around 5 percent that is second-worst in the nation.
However, experts do provide some hope in cities where the numbers suggest less than desirable outcomes for the year. In Boston, where median home prices saw a 4.3 percent decrease from an all-time high in 2005, realtors say the market is still strong.