articles about “Year-End Predictions”
Housing in 2013: What’s In, What’s Out
What a difference a year makes. 2012 was the year the housing recovery came to life – with the market now stronger than anyone dared hope for a year ago. Here’s what 2013 has in store.
One year ago, I wrote: “Even the best possible 2012 won’t get us halfway back toward normal.” That turns out to be true, but barely: the latest Trulia Housing Barometer, for October, showed us that the market is 47% back to normal. And this year, we launched the Trulia Price Monitor–which revealed back in March that asking prices were on the rise–one of the earliest indicators of the home-price recovery. All in all, the housing market enters 2013 with strong tailwinds, but that could change.
2013’s Top 10 Healthiest Housing Markets
Houston and San Francisco are the nation’s healthiest housing markets heading into 2013. They have solid fundamentals, without the extreme price swings of Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Detroit.
Along with our take on what’s in and what’s out for housing in 2013, I’ve got my eye on 10 “healthy” housing markets with solid fundamentals. The healthy markets that made the list have strong job growth (Bureau of Labor Statistics), which bodes well for housing demand; low vacancy rates (U.S. Postal Service)–low enough to encourage new construction, but not so low that inventory and sales are restrained; and low foreclosure inventory (RealtyTrac), since foreclosures tend to hold back recovery.
But why, you might ask, aren’t rising prices included as part of our definition of healthy local housing markets? Because many of the markets with the largest price gains in 2012 were rebounding from huge price declines during the bust, but they still have weak fundamentals, such as high vacancy rates, large foreclosure inventories, or slow job growth. For instance, Las Vegas and Phoenix both have high vacancy rates and large foreclosure inventories going into 2013, despite having year-over-year asking-price increases of 14% and 27%, respectively, according to the November Trulia Price Monitor. And Detroit has a sky-high vacancy rate and is suffering job losses, even though asking prices in Detroit rose 10% year-over-year. Just as losing lots of weight might be part of an unhealthy cycle of yo-yo dieting, big price gains aren’t necessarily a sign of a healthy housing market if they’re being driven by a post-crash rebound, rather than solid fundamentals. That’s why Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Detroit aren’t on the healthiest-markets list for 2013.
0 commentsGet social with us.
