Housing

America's Worst Real Estate Market

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The residential real estate market has started to cool. The National Association of Home Builders recently released its National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. The index dropped at an alarming pace. Interest rates have knocked homebuilding out of the market. It is one of several signs home prices will continue to drop. The state of housing has a wide range across America’s major metropolitan areas. A new study shows the most damaged real estate market is Albany, New York, one of the poorest cities in the country. Most of the cities with real estate problems are also ones where people tend to have low incomes.
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The 2022 Study: Taking the Temperature of America’s Housing Markets from real estate services provider Porch looks at nine metrics. These are centered around how long homes remain on the market in the cities measured, the average home price year over the previous year and the percentage of listings with price cuts. Data were pulled from Zillow and Redfin. A total of 93 markets were included.

The study offered some good news. The average price of a home listed for sale this year is $347,900, which is 13% higher than in the same period in 2021. The report notes, “Today, with rising inflation and mortgage rates, the upward trend continues, but cracks in the monolithic growth are starting to show.”


Cities were scored on a scale of 1 to 100, with the highest figure being the best. Albany had a score of 29.8. Much of this was due to a drop of 68% in average monthly sales. The average price of a house in Albany so far this year was a low $232,500. Among the most poorly ranked markets were others with low home prices: Milwaukee ($227,600), Baltimore ($335,000) and Pittsburgh ($205,900).


The city with the highest score was Greenville, S.C., with a score of 88.4.

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