Consistent with trends that materialized in December, home value appreciation continued to weaken in many markets around the country during January. Nationally, while the annualized appreciation rate continued to improve -– increasing from -5.5% in December to -4.8% in January –- home values declined 0.33% from the prior month (a slightly larger monthly depreciation than the 0.27% recorded in December). See Figure 1 for the national performance in historical context.
Of the markets I focus on in the table below, four stayed in positive or flat territory in terms of month-over-month appreciation: Los Angeles (0.2%), Philadelphia (0.2%), San Diego (0.0%) and San Francisco (0.3%). Five markets stayed in positive territory in terms of year-over-year appreciation: Boston (1.7%), Denver (0.4%), Los Angeles (0.9%), San Diego (0.2%) and San Francisco (0.9%). It was just four months ago that sixteen of the twenty-four markets shown in the accompanying table had recorded four or more months of positive monthly appreciation in home values.
The number of homeowners losing their homes to foreclosure across the country remained unchanged from December, but was still pegged at the highest level seen in Zillow’s data, which began in 1996. In January, more than one in every thousand homes in the U.S. reached the final stage of foreclosure.
Foreclosure re-sales as a percentage of all transactions notched up in January to 22.28%, largely as a function of the decreasing volume of non-foreclosure sales in the winter months relative to the steady stream of foreclosure re-sales.
It seems that the home buyer tax credits are keeping some additional incremental demand in the marketplace during the winter, but they are not having the same powerful impact on home sales seen in the late summer and fall of 2009. This suggests that most of the incremental buyers who could be coaxed off the fence and into the marketplace were already persuaded to purchase before the extension of the tax credit last November. Undoubtedly, there will be another mini-frenzy of home buying around the expiration of these tax credits in June but we expect this spike to be a very muted version of the November spike. In line with our smaller expectations for a spike in sales before expiration, we also think that the payback in diminished sales post-expiration will be more muted.
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A Month That Makes Us Miss Last Summer – January Real Estate Performance
As actor Mel Gibson proceeded with his highly publicized divorce from wife Robyn last year, it was revealed that a lot of Gibson’s wealth is tied up in real estate. Last year, he put his Old Mill Farm estate on the market for $35 million and it looks like it’s still for sale, but at a big price cut. The Greenwich, CT property is now listed for $29,750,000. (See more celebrity price cuts).
