So, this historic decline in housing affordability must have driven down home prices over the past year, right?
It’s a mixed bag.
Of the 400 largest urban housing markets tracked by Zillow’s seasonally adjusted home value index, 174 were below their pandemic peak in April for local home prices. The other 226 markets either returned to their epidemic peak, or reached an entirely higher peak in April.
Western markets like Boise and San Francisco have seen domestic home prices drop 10% from their 2022 peaks, while markets like Miami and Cincinnati just hit new all-time highs for local home prices in April.
Real estate is local, however, and the divided – and quite bizarre – housing market really takes it to extremes.
“The housing market in a wild pandemic era has made price growth trends more local than they have been since 2009,” Taylor Marr, deputy chief economist at Redfin, wrote in a report published this week. “The historic price growth gap between San Francisco and Miami illustrates how local the housing market has remained, as the Bay Area loses out to homebuyers and is drawn to South Florida.”
This ramified market “means it’s more important than ever to focus on local trends,” says Marr.
Why has the housing market split so far over the past year?
One reason is that Western housing markets are simply more price sensitive. First, Western market pressures on affordability after years of excessive housing price growth, leaving them vulnerable to severe affordability pressures as mortgage rates rise. Second, those western markets have a high concentration of technology jobs, which are at risk whenever the Fed goes into anti-inflation mode.
The fact that Miami prices are holding up so well despite a national downturn in home buying suggests that Florida’s relative popularity is here to stay. Although some employees return to offices at least a few days a week, the pandemic has given many Americans more freedom. where they choose to live — and a lot of them choose places where shelling out $1.5 million for an average home isn’t the norm,” Marr wrote.
To better understand this forked housing market, luck Create 11 statewide maps using seasonally adjusted Zillow Home Value Index data. These maps show how home prices are at the zip code level in April 2023 compared to the peak of the pandemic. If a particular zip code is shaded blue, that means local home prices in April 2023 were at an all-time high.
Of the 1,564 California zip codes tracked by Zillow, 98.5% are below the peak of the pandemic for local home prices; 1.5% of California zip codes were at their epidemic peak in April.
Of the 1,554 Texas zip codes tracked by Zillow, 69.6% were below peak pandemic price for local homes, while 30.4% of Texas zip codes were at peak pandemic price in April.
Of the 927 Florida zip codes tracked by Zillow, 76.2% were below their pandemic peak for local house prices, while 23.8% of Florida zip codes were at their peak pandemic price in April.
Of the 1,038 Ohio ZIP Codes tracked by Zillow, 46% are below peak epidemic relative to local home prices; 54% of Ohio zip codes were at their peak pandemic rate in April.
Of the 722 North Carolina Zip Codes tracked by Zillow, 38.8% were below peak pandemic price for local homes, while 61.2% of North Carolina Zip Codes were at peak pandemic price in April.
Of the 303 Arizona zip codes tracked by Zillow, 90.1% were below their pandemic peak for local home prices, while 9.9% of Arizona zip codes were at their peak pandemic price in April.
Of the 782 Missouri ZIP Codes tracked by Zillow, 30.4% were below the peak of the pandemic for local home prices; 69.6% of Missouri zip codes were at the peak rate of the pandemic in April.
Of the 424 Maryland zip codes tracked by Zillow, 46% were below peak pandemic prices for local homes, while 54% of Maryland zip codes were at peak pandemic prices in April.
Of the 259 Connecticut zip codes tracked by Zillow, 25.1% were below the peak of their pandemic for local house prices, while 74.9% of Connecticut zip codes were at their peak pandemic price in April.
Of the 22 District of Columbia zip codes tracked by Zillow, one had a ZIP code below peak pandemic for local home prices, while 21 District of Columbia zip codes were at peak pandemic price in April.
Of the 230 Vermont zip codes tracked by Zillow, 13.5% were below the epidemic peak for local home prices, while 86.5% of Vermont zip codes were at the epidemic peak for local home prices in April.
Want more housing data? Follow me on Twitter at @employee.
