Dennis Norman
According to the Housing Market Report that was issued this morning by Radarlogic, home prices increased in June from the previous month in 23 out of the 25 metropolitan areas tracked by their company.
Overall the composite for all 25 metros showed a 3% gain in price from May to June representing one of the largest monthly gains reported by RadarLogic since June 2000. There has been a trend of price increases reported for the 25 metro areas for the past few months. In fact, the increase in the Radar Logic Composite from February to June outpaced the house price gains over the same period during the previous threes years, and the increase in house prices from April to June was the largest since the beginning of Radar Logic’s date in 2000. 
Other highlights from the RadarLogic Housing Market report for June are:
- In 14 of the 25 metro areas tracked by Radar Logic, over half of all homes sold in June were sold at a price per square foot within one standard deviation of the mean motivated price (in plain language I think what they are trying to say is the prices between a “normal” home sale and a “motivated sale” (such as a foreclosure) did not have a large gap between them indicating that foreclosures have done all the damage to home prices they are going to do and home prices may be stabilizing.)
- Since the beginning of 2009, home sales in the top 50 percent of zip codes ranked by median home price have become a larger share of total sales in each of the 25 metro areas.
- The number of sales requiring a jumbo loan increased over the first six months of the year in several major metropolitan areas. In most of these cities, jumbo sales increased faster than sales that qualify for conforming loans. (a “jumbo” loan refers to a loan amount that exceeds the maximum loan amount for a Fannie Mae loan which, depending on where you live, could be from $417,000 up to $938,.250)
The Radar Logic report states “observing the current upward momentum in prices, it is reasonable to believe that the housing sector may see a late seasonal peak this year.” While I personally think it is optimistic to expect a “peak” this year I am definitely glad to see some stabilization and stalling out of declines in the market.
The following list shows the metro areas covered by the RadarLogic report where home prices have done the best in the past year:
- Philadelphia – 2.9 percent decline in home prices
- Charlotte – 3.2 percent decline in home prices
- Milwaukee – 3.7 percent decline in home prices
- Cleveland – 4.6 percent decline in home prices
- Washington D.C. – 5.7 percent decline in home prices
The list below shows the metro areas that, of the 25 covered, home prices have done the poorest in the past year:
- Las Vegas – 32.1 percent decline in home prices
- Phoenix – 26.6 percent decline in home prices
- Miami – 23.3 percent decline in home prices
- Chicago – 21.4 percent decline in home prices
- Detroit – 20.2 percent decline in home prices
What’s interesting about the Radar Logic Housing Report, and I think that at first blush may make it more representative of the market than some of the other home price reports that are out there, is that the Radar Logic Housing Report is based upon the price per foot that homes sell for in the 25 metropolitan markets they report on. This would tend to lead to a more “apples to apples” comparison in my opinion as just looking at sale prices and not home size could end up skewing the data in areas where the size and/or type of housing stock changed over time.
[...] home price indices combine matched price pairs for thousands of individual houses much like the radar logic report for June I wrote about at the end of last week. The Radar Logic report showed house prices increasing in June [...]
[...] home price indices combine matched price pairs for thousands of individual houses much like the radar logic report for June I wrote about at the end of last week. The Radar Logic report showed house prices increasing in June [...]