Housing appreciation slows

Posted on September 6, 2006 by Jim Duncan

I had a neat little post all ready to go referencing these two articles -

Housing’s rate of appreciation slows.
Home prices’ rise slows – this is not a “bad thing.” (Free link)

- and then the NYTimes comes out with their spin on the data – Home Prices Fall in Nearly One-Fourth of Metropolitan Regions. It’s all about perspective.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO)’s quarterly report (PDF) was released the other day and has been the talk of the town.

As a region,

The South Atlantic Census Division including Florida, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland experienced its most significant price deceleration since at least the early 1980s.  Its four-quarter appreciation rate fell from 17.43 percent to 13.74 percent.   

Even more specifically, are we really in a position to masticate and gnash our teeth over this?

Charlottesville’s MSA*
National Ranking – 64
1-Year Appreciation – 14.52%
Quarter Appreciation – 4.11%
5 Year Appreciation – 79.93%

*MSA = Charlottesville, Albemarle, Greene, Fluvanna, Nelson

National statistics are a good guide to what is happening to the local market. Whether the County of Albemarle enforces its proffers will impact our market far more than what happens in Peoria (which has had a 22% increase in price over five years).

Importantly, the agent bubble continues to lose ground – only about 30% of all area Realtors have had five or more transactions!

The housing market continues to combat the culture of fear being propagated by the media. The best defense to this fear-mongering? Patience, careful and unemotional data analysis and diligent review and movement.

What does it mean when the Government is using bubble visuals to depict the housing market? (It’s actually a pretty cool picture)

Bubble Size

Even more interesting and somewhat intimidating is this chart that has been making the rounds in the past several days -

Wp-Content 9-2006 History (larger version here)

The WP has a good article as well.

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About Jim Duncan

A Charlottesville Realtor who tries to stay on the bleeding/cutting/functional edge of technology and real estate trends. I have been selling real estate for the past 10 years, lived in C'Ville for twenty+ and am married to one of few Charlottesville natives left.
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  • Ray Hyde

    Gee, I’m really sad that my four quarter appreciation rate is down from 17.4% to 13.7%. At 13.7% it is still almost three times the rate of my increas in income and 3.5% more than my stock market investments.

    Some slump.

  • Barry Economics

    I worked for a home builder in the North East. We sold 60 homes a month last year. We sold negative 8 homes in July. Yes, it is actually possible to sell a negative number since we count sales when a contract is written. Some sales later fall through. If more people back out than purchase, we have negative sales. Contrast that to last year when we had waiting lists. The truth is it is very very ugly out there, and it is getting worse every month. Your house appreciated 13.7%. That’s awesome, but I would definately sell now, if I could. Take your profits and get out. From an insider, belive me, it’s far worse than you think.

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