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Home
prices shot up in America's largest cities in May, rising at a pace not
seen since the bubble days, according to a closely watched gauge.
The
Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of 20 large U.S. cities,
released Tuesday, rose 2.4% from April and 12.2% from May 2012 — the
largest year-over-year gain since March 2006.
Average
home prices across the 20 cities have now reached their spring 2004
level. For the first time, two cities — Denver and Dallas — surpassed
the peaks they reached before the 2008 financial crisis. All cities
tracked by the index saw prices rise from a year earlier and the
previous month.
'The
long-awaited housing recovery is in full swing,' Senior Economist Erik
Johnson of IHS Global Insight wrote in an emailed analysis. 'We expect
housing to remain a key driver of growth for at least the next couple of
years.'
Low
mortgage rates, a shortage of homes for saleand heavy investor demand
have sent home prices sharply higher this year, providing an economic
lift but also sparking concerns that some markets are getting
overheated.
Las
Vegas and Phoenix, two cities where prices fell hardduring the bust,
have come roaring back, in large part because investors have scooped up
many foreclosed properties to flip or rent out. Year-over-year prices
rose 23.3% in Las Vegas and 20.6% in Phoenix. Those gains were surpassed
only by the San Francisco market, a tech mecca where prices skyrocketed
24.5% from May 2012.
Southern
California price increases maintained their breakneck pace in May.
Prices in the Los Angeles region rose 19.2% over the year and 17.3% in
the San Diego area.
'The market is on fire right now,' said Max Nelson, a senior partner at Deasy/Penner & Partners' Beverly Hills office.
Nelson
said his company had already received multiple offers for a Pacific
Palisades home it placed on the market Friday for $1.65 million — before
even holding an open house.
The
gains are rapidly eating away at affordability, further hampering the
efforts of first-time home buyers who often must compete with all-cash
investor offers in many markets. Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA's
Ziman Center for Real Estate, said the recovery is pricing out some home
buyers — a disconcerting trend.
'The rebound has been striking,' he said.
The
median home price in the six-county Southland rose 28% in June to
$385,000 — a record year-over-year gain, according to research firm
DataQuick. The median is the point at which half the homes sold for more
and half sold for less, so it reflects the mix of homes selling as well
as rising values.
The
Case-Shiller index, by contrast, seeks to account for such influences
and to estimate the real increase in value. It compares home values by
comparing the recent sales of detached houses with past sales of those
same homes, taking into account factors such as remodeling that might
affect a home's price. Created by economists Karl E. Case and Robert J.
Shiller, the gauge is the most widely followed home price measure.
New York, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., posted the slowest year-over-year increases in May: 3.3%, 3.4% and 6.5%, respectively.
Johnson
of IHS Global Insight said the inventory shortages driving much of the
recovery will probably continue, noting that new single-familyhome
building has been muted since late 2007, while the U.S. population has
grown by more than 12 million. Demand, he said, is still outpacing
construction of new homes despite a recent uptick in building.
The
inventory crunch will probably get worse before it gets better, Johnson
said. 'This means that home price gains in most cities and state[s] are
likely to remain strong for some time,' he wrote.
But
rising interest rates should eventually help blunt the swift increases,
economists say. Since early May, mortgage interest rates have climbed
roughly one percentage point, although they still remain historically
low.
Those
higher rates helped convince Americans to sign slightly fewer contracts
for existing homes in Junethan in May, a report released Monday showed.
And some Los Angeles real estate agents have said they've recently
noticed a slight cooling of the market.
Prices
rose 2.6% in the L.A. metro region from April to May, a slowing from
the 3.4% increase from March to April. In San Diego, prices jumped 3.1%
in May, compared with a 3.7% gain a month earlier.
Gabriel
said he expects the rapid price gains to slow this winter as more
supply comes on the market through new construction and as more
homeowners are enticed to become sellers. That, along with decreasing
affordability and tighter lending standards, should lessen demand and
'reduce any chance of bubble activity,' he said.
Article and Photos Courtesty of LA Times Business section
Times staff writer Alejandro Lazo contributed to this report.