But first some BREAKING NEWS.
“unhealthy and unsustainable pace.” — Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors, June 30, 2015
Yun today came out with this quote about recent home price increases. Wow!
Quotes from the previous chief economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), David Lereah, became a national joke during the Great Real Estate Boom and Bust of the 2000s. In 2005, for example, he called people who called it a real estate bubble, “chicken littles” and in 2007 when the handwriting was on the wall for most people, Lereah was still as bullish as ever about home prices increasing. The whole blind optimism of the real estate sales industry was personified by Lereah and by the catchphrase, “It’s always a good time to buy.”
Not your father’s NAR. Now I’m shocked and pleased that NAR isn’t shilling for real estate agents and is giving home buyers and sellers some honest information about the real estate market in the United States.
Now on to our regularly scheduled broadcast.
9 Hot Real Estate Markets
The Case-Shiller numbers just came out for April. You can play with my updated interactive graphs HERE.
San Francisco still leads the pack. Look at that pink line on the graph! Super steep!
Homes prices are increasing fast in Los Angeles, Miami, San Diego and Tampa – all big bubble markets – but also in Seattle and Portland which had smaller bubbles, and also in Denver and Dallas which didn’t really have any real estate bubbles at all since 2000.
A lot of the national news stories about home price increases have been about Dallas and Denver for some reason but as you can see from the graph both cities have appreciated less since 2000 than the other cities on the graph. Maybe because Dallas and Denver were spared from real estate bubbles in the 2000’s, these price increases feel newer and bigger to the people living in those cities than the much larger price increases feel to the jaded home sellers and house buyers in the other 7 cities.
I’m worried about the rapidly increasing home prices in some cities. Is San Francisco in 2015, Houston in 1981? Is tech, San Francisco’s oil?
Look at my inflation-adjusted Case-Shiller graph and you’ll see that Dallas and Denver look fine but Los Angeles home prices look downright scary.
Why is Los Angeles so prone to real estate bubbles? On my Case-Shiller graphs, move the date slider all the way to the left and you’ll see that no city boomed and busted more than L.A. during the savings and loan real estate bubble in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
11 Warm Real Estate Markets
Several of the warm but not hot cities didn’t have a huge real estate bubble 10 years ago, for example, Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland and Detroit.
Washington D.C. was one of the strongest U.S. real estate markets (or “least weak” market) during the real estate bust. From 2009 to 2012, Washington D.C. had the highest home prices relative to prices in 2000 than in any of the other 20 cities Case-Shiller follows. Now, however, Washington D.C. home prices don’t have the same upward momentum we’re seeing in the “hot” markets.
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What do you see in your town? Please leave a comment below.