Last week the Federal Housing Finance Authority released 4th quarter numbers for the US on housing. Mostly what has been reported is the continued decline in home values. In the U.S. the decline has been 8.27% from the previous year and a 4.36 decline for the quarter. The good news is there was a 12.74% increase in the 5 year numbers as well as 100.50% increase from 1991.
Of the top 20 markets that saw the hgihest declines all of them were in California or Florida except for the Las Vegas area so since we aren't in any of those places the national numbers don't mean as much to us.
In Colorado overall we saw a 2.61% decline year over year and a 3.04% decline in the 4th quarter. Our 5 year growth was 9.24% - and 167.74% increase since 1991. While a few years ago when Florida and California was seeing double digit growth, in Colorado our growth was steady and strong. I believe that is what is helping us through this crisis now as people didn't see their home values double and triple they aren't seeing major declines now either.
Colorado ranks 17th overall in lowest declines and in the US there are actually areas where housing is rising - slightly but it is increase.
Breaking down the metro area numbers the main indicator the Federal Gov't uses is the Denver/Aurora area - it doesn't include any other suburbs so these numbers can be a good indicator but doesn't give the overall picture of the metro area.
Year over year we saw a decline of .071% and quarter over quarter we saw an INCREASE (that is NOT a typo) INCREASE of .77%. While neither of these numbers are large or significant it does show that maybe we are trending into better times. In 5 years our housing prices have increased 6.34% and currently of all the cities ranked we are 111. I think this is really good news for home sellers and buyers both - while prices aren't falling like they were a year ago they are actually increasing slightly.
While bad news dominates our newspapers - we have to remember that it is better to look at local numbers to see what is happening vs looking at the US overall. There are some states that are still seeing an increase in foreclosure activity in the Metro area we seemed to be the first to go through this in the country and I believe we are coming out of it. The next few months are the busiest times in real estate and it will be interesting to see what happens during this period.