InsideRealEstateNews: Colorado Ranks 5th in the Top Ten Strongest Housing Markets

Published in Inside Real Estate News | September 4, 2012 | Written by John Rebchook

Colorado boasts the nation’s fifth best housing market, according to a report released today.

The report by 24/7 Wall Street said home prices in Colorado have risen by 7.3 percent in 12-month period ending in July, with a median home price of $240,00.

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5. Colorado
> 1 yr. home price change: +7.3%
> Median home price: $240,000
> Unemployment rate: 8.3% (20th highest)

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“The Colorado housing market was not badly damaged when the housing bubble broke,” according to the analysis, which ranked Arizona as No. 1, with a 16.6 percent year-over-year increase in home prices.

The online service, which provides analysis and commentary on a variety of domestic and international equities and asset classes, including real estate, based the ranking of the top 10 housing markets on a number of sources. They included:

• The Corelogic Home Price Index.
• Foreclosure data from RealtyTrac.
• Fiserv, an information management company that provides data for the Case-S&P/Case-Shiller home price index.
• Trulia, the online real estate search site.
• Unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The analysis said that home prices in Colorado dropped 9.5 percent from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2012, the 18th best among all states.

“The market’s recovery rate will put it in the middle among the 50 states,” the report said. “Colorado home prices are forecast to recover at 3.7 percent between the first quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year, the 22nd-highest increase. Over the longer period from the first quarter of this year until the first quarter of 2017, prices are expected to improve 2.4 percent per annum, which ranks it 42nd.”

Independent broker Gary Bauer said that the national report reflects well on Colorado and the Denver area. He said he thinks the trend it is showing, and the state’s record, are in line with what he has read, although he may quibble with the exact percentage changes in the analysis.

“I tend to agree with them as far as their conclusion, but I’m not quite comfortable with their numbers,”
Bauer said.

“I think a lot of markets are taking two steps forward and one step back, which no longer seems to be the case with our market. We seem to be making incremental steps forward and are not backsliding.”

To read the entire report, please visit 24/7 Wall Street.