The Value of a Home Rose by $36,000 in This State

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 11, 7:12AM EST

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The Value of a Home Rose by $36,000 in This State — © MarkHatfield / Getty Images

Home prices have risen sharply in most parts of the United States over the past several quarters. Historically low interest rates have triggered buying power. While part of the population has had jobs wrecked by COVID-19, much of the middle and upper class in America has done well. And the pandemic has driven hundreds of thousands of people from cities to suburbs and even rural areas.

Property information firm CoreLogic recently released a report on the U.S. home market. It measured, among other things, home values in the third quarter of this year, compared with those in 2019. Overall, the value of American homes, what it terms “home equity,” rose $1 trillion over the period, which translates to $17,000 a home.

This gain was the largest since the first quarter of 2014, when the housing market continued to recover from the sharp sell-off of the Great Recession.

Home values and the broader economy can create a virtuous circle as values rise. Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic, commented, “The housing market has remained a strong pillar in an otherwise tumultuous economic year.” Home buying often triggers home improvement investments. That, in turn, drives more jobs.
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The real estate market has not improved evenly across the country. The job situation has gotten worse in some states than in others. The state with the smallest gain in home equity for the period was North Dakota. Sharp drops in oil prices have shaved jobs from the state’s economy. Home equity in the state rose, on average, only $5,400.

The increase in average home equity rose the most in Washington State. According to the research:

States with strong home price growth and high home prices continued to experience the largest gains in equity. This includes Washington, where homeowners gained an average of $35,800; California, where homeowners gained an average of $33,800 and Massachusetts, where homeowners gained an average of $31,200.

While it isn’t entirely clear why these states did so well, each is either affluent or has large cities where many residents live. Additionally, these increases are bound to help their state economies, no matter what the reason.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.