HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
LEAD ARTICLE
Persistent Home Price Appreciation Pressures Market Orthodoxies
BY PETER MILLER, STAFF WRITER
More than six million buyers stepped up and bought a home in 2017, the most since 2006. It’s a huge vote of real estate confidence, a trillion-dollar bet that all is right with the housing market. By any standard 2017 was a very good year. RE/MAX reports that in the 54 markets it tracks home prices rose 8.1 percent from a year earlier. Zillow says almost a quarter of 2017 existing home sales closed above the asking price. In
November the National Association of Realtors (NAR) announced that third- quarter home prices rose year-over- year in 162 out of 177 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). And home sellers are benefiting from the rising prices. The average profit since purchase for homeowners who sold in the fourth quarter of 2017 was $54,000, representing a 29.7 percent return on investment since purchase –
the highest average home seller profit both in terms of dollars and percentage since Q3 2007, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. But looking ahead the tea leaves are not so clear. There’s now a tug-of- war in the real estate marketplace which suggests that 2018 will be a year of transition, that many of the old assumptions will be tested.
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FEBRUARY 2018 | ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS
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