DSNews The homepage of the servicing industry
Homes.com has released its December Local Market Index, a price performance summary of repeat sales of U.S. properties. The index notes year-over-year gains for single-family properties in all 300 top U.S markets for the ninth consecutive month.
The total markets that are considered "fully recovered" have increased to 89, up from the previous month’s 87.
Mid-size markets saw a large improvement in recovery efforts; 60 of the top 200 mid-size markets have fully recovered previous losses in home prices.
The index considers a market to be "fully recovered" based on the market's current index value to its corresponding value in the year 2000. "An index value above 100 indicates sales prices above the normalized level while an index value below 100 indicates sales prices below the normalized level," the company's website notes.
The South dominated the top 100 rebounding markets with 15 energy-based economies in Texas and Oklahoma.
"Despite the holiday season and the early winter storms in most of the nation, the number of top 100 markets to reach or surpass their peak prices at the height of the boom in 2007 increased to 29 markets, according to December's data," said Brock MacLean, EVP of Homes.com. "With the largest year-over-year housing market price increases in seven years, the U.S. housing market is in a great position to continue making steady gains in 2014."
The Homes.com index is significantly more optimistic than other reports, specifically the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for December, which is cautious to project continued growth in 2014.
