Real estate winners and losers in 2008
Of special homeowner interest: Although the nationwide real estate market was terrible for 2008, not everybody suffered and in some areas there was actually good news. Some towns saw modest gains in their home values, while others lost big. As reported in Business Week:
Working with Seattle's Zillow.com, BusinessWeek.com came up with 2008's best and worst towns for real estate in each state. Zillow ranked the towns using the average of the annual home value change in the first three quarters of 2008. Of course, the housing problems are likely to have worsened in the fourth quarter when the financial crisis took hold and made home buyers even more cautious.
But communities—even those within the same state—haven't suffered equally. You'll find relatively healthy pockets even in the most badly damaged states. The tony Silicon Valley community of Palo Alto, Calif., for example, experienced a 4% increase in home values this year. By comparison, home values in the California's worst performing town, Soledad in the Salinas Valley of Monterey County, fell nearly 40%.
In New York, the real estate winner is the upstate working class town of Utica, where home prices have remained stable. In an interview with Joseph Stachow, owner of Central NY Appraisal Service, he said that Utica real estate prices are relatively steady, year in and year out. And he expects home prices will remain resilient. Many residents work in recession-proof jobs: prisons, universities, and hospitals, he said. Shirley, a town in Suffolk County, Long Island, experienced the worst decline. For the full article and a state by state analysis, visit the following link:
Real Estate Winners and Losers 2008