Summit Valuations, LLC, a full service valuation company, announced today the release of its July Residential Real Estate Market Overview based on the most current industry information available. This month’s report includes an analysis of housing price recovery by Summit Chief Valuation Officer Mark Melikian.
“NAR reports that May was the 63rd straight month of year-over-year gains in home prices. That’s great, but that recovery has been far from even,” Melikian said in his report. “Although home prices are rising on a nationwide basis, real estate values have always been dependent on local market conditions. Since home prices began their post-recession recovery in the early months of 2012, there has been an uneven recovery with some markets performing better than others.”
Melikian provided an analysis of two cities with very different economic conditions, looking at specific existing-home price data for Detroit and Denver.
“While my analysis is based largely on anecdotal evidence from the two markets, the results corroborate the contention that home prices will tend to rise in areas with strong local employment conditions such as low unemployment and increasing incomes,” Melikian said. “The median existing-home price is currently the highest it’s ever been on a national level. However, the post-recession home price recovery has not yet reached all communities, proving that real estate is truly local.”
As for the monthly statistics: In May 2017, the monthly supply of existing homes listed for sale, the pending home sales index and the unemployment rate all decreased on a year-over-year basis. The median sales price, the seasonally adjusted number of homes sold and mortgage interest rates all increased year over year.
On a regional level, the South had the highest number of existing home sales and the West had the highest median price. The Midwest experienced a month-over-month decrease in the number of seasonally adjusted existing home sales while all other regions saw month-over-month increases. All four regions experienced increases in the median sales price month over month, the report said.