Home Prices rise in 30 of 50 States

Somehow news like this rarely reaches the front page and instead the gripping headlines with bad news are almost always chosen. While the national market clearly has issues it is not all bad and there are often encouraging stats like this if you red some of the more thoughtful media.

According to the Office of Federal Housing Oversight's Housing Price Index for the 2nd Quarter of 2008 released August 26th, 30 of the 50 States had positive changes in house prices from June 2007 through June 2008, including Colorado!

Only 4 States (Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and California) experienced overall price declines of more than 5 percent.

The 20 ranked cities in the United States with the worst price declines over the last 4 quarters were ALL in Florida, California, and Nevada.

I really do sympathize with the people of these four fine States. Some of the price declines they have experienced are simply horrible! However, there are 50 States and only 4 with truly bad news for the last year. The rest of the country is simply experiencing a market correction from a rapid increase over the last 5 years combined with some sloppy loan practices that hurt the lending industry. The United States overall had a -1.71% change over the last year (skewed down heavily by the 4 troubled States).

However, even with the challenges over the last year, if you step back and look over a few years like any long term investment should be evaluated the United States STILL has had a 34.84% increase in home prices over the last 5 years! - That is not bad at all and the states that are down the most now are still up more than the national average. Over the last 5 years, Arizona STILL gained 62.68%, Florida STILL gained 54.03%, Nevada STILL Gained 50.81%, and California STILL gained 41.81% despite the losses of the last 4 quarters.

It is time for the news media to put away "The Sky is Falling" focus of their reporting and report the good news along with the bad. There are many signs that the market is working through the current challenges, inventory is going down and prices are stabilizing. While we still have challenges and some real problems the market is making progress.

Here in Steamboat we are up quite a bit more over time and prices have held stable and even increased in higher end properties. Only a few low end properties have been effected and those are still up by large percentages over a few years time. Give me a call if you would like to hear more about what is going on here in Steamboat. For more click back to the Steamboat Springs blog main page.