According to CoreLogic, a data analysis firm, domestic home prices in the U.S. experienced a dramatic uptick over December, rising for the tenth straight month while also gaining the most in more than six years.
Year-over-year for December, CoreLogic’s home price index posted an increase of 8.3 percent—the biggest rise since mid-2006. This adds to an increasingly widespread consensus that the U.S. housing market is on a definite upward trend, recovering after the catastrophic housing market collapse and recession of 2007-2009.
Reuters reports:
“We are heading into 2013 with home prices on the rebound,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive of CoreLogic. “The upward trend in home prices in 2012 was broad based with 46 of 50 states registering gains for the year. All signals point to a continued improvement in the fundamentals underpinning the U.S. housing market recovery.”
The pace of this recovery isn’t uniform. Counting distressed sales—or sales of houses for reduced prices when at risk of foreclosure—the five states demonstrating high home appreciation are Arizona (20.2 percent), Nevada (15.3 percent), Idaho (14.6 percent), California (12.6 percent), and Hawaii (12.5 percent).
In contrast, four states showed falling home prices. These are Delaware (3.4 percent), Illinois (2.7 percent), New Jersey (0.9 percent), and Pennsylvania (0.5 percent).
But the growth exceeds the decline, and overall the national housing market looks promising.
