The Hottest Housing Market In America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 29, 12:30PM EDT

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The Hottest Housing Market In America — © TriggerPhoto / iStock via Getty Images

There is a real concern that the extremely hot housing market has started to collapse, especially in markets where prices have surged at record paces. One of the threats is due to mortgage rates that have risen from 3% a year ago to 7% recently. Home affordability has been compromised. Several markets have home prices that rose at a hotter pace than most of the market, which is extraordinary. According to new research, the one with the largest run-up since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is Cape Coral, FL.
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Data collected by a home remodeling company showed the top increases, on a percentage basis, across 50 cities. Most of the data came from the home sales company Zillow. The cities with the highest increases were heavily concentrated in one state. The researchers said: “Florida cities dominated the list of 50 cities, with five in the top ten alone.” The measurement began at the start of 2020 and ran through this July.

Home prices in Cape Carol rose 86% to $437,000. That is about the median value of a home nationwide. Several other cities were clustered in the same part of Florida. St. Petersburg ranked third with a price jump of 77% to $368,000. Clearwater ranked 5th with a surge of 71% to $361,000. Tampa ranked 8th with an increase of 69% to $420,000.

Home price increases in these cities may have collapsed. Hurricane Ian tore apart many of the towns on Florida’s West Coast. The devastation in Cape Carol was as bad as in any other city in the region.

Even without the storm, Cape Coral’s prices have been at risk. Cities with double-digit price jumps may fall the most as the housing market begins to have prices that reset lower. One of the reasons is affordability. More and more residents in cities where home prices moved sharply found it impossible to stay. Marry this with mortgage rates and the effects on home prices will be terrible.
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The new data only measures home prices through July. If they showed the numbers through September, the conclusions would become exaggerated.

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.