The real estate research firm Core Logic just produced their latest Homeowner Equity Insights report.

Some interesting tidbits:

• 63% of all properties nationally have a mortgage
• Homeowners with mortgages collective realized a $428 billion rise in equity over last year, an increase of 4.8%
• Only 3.8% of all mortgaged properties have negative equity (where the loan is greater than the value of the home)
• 10 years ago 26% of all mortgaged properties had negative equity

It’s no surprise that for just about every homeowner, their real estate represents the largest portion of their net worth.

Check out these numbers from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances:

Median Net Worth in the U.S. = $97,300
Median Net Worth of a Renter = $5,200
Median Net Worth of a Homeowner = $231,400

Some fascinating research from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors…

37% of properties that sold last month along the Front Range had a price reduction at some point during the listing period.

Property owners who have to reduce their price take an average of 58 days to receive an offer.

Those who don’t have to reduce their price only take 13 days.

This stat obviously speaks to the importance of pricing your property right on day one.

Seventy-five major metro markets have seen home prices bounce back to above their pre-recession peaks.

Metro Denver has seen the biggest bounce with home values 91% above its previous high in 2007 , according to the Home Price Recovery Index from HSH.com.

“Aside from routinely strong home price appreciation, it’s important to know that the Denver metro’s housing ‘bust’ in 2008 was relatively short and shallow,” said Keith Gumbinger, the report’s author.

The peak-to-trough for home values was only three years long and the total decline in value was just under 8 percent in Metro Denver, he said.

By contrast, a half-dozen large metros have seen home prices more than double from their lows and still not reach the old highs. On that list are Las Vegas, Sacramento, Calif., and Cape Coral, Fla.

We have our pulse on the high-end luxury market.

The activity in price ranges over $1,000,000 is an effective indicator of the health of the overall market.

If buyers for luxury properties are active, it tells us that “smart money” is confident about real estate in Metro Denver.

So far this year, 1671 luxury properties have sold.  This is 75 more than had sold at this same time last year and 440 more than 2017.

It seems “smart money” is confident.

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Rates hit near-historic lows this week and are now at 3.49% for a 30-year mortgage.

There have only been two other times in history when rates have been this low- April 2013 and October 2016.

It’s interesting to see what happened soon after bottoming out these last two times.

In April of 2013 rates hit 3.41%.  By August 2013 they had jumped to 4.40%.

Rates bottomed again in October 2016 at 3.42%.  Just two months later in December 2016 they were 4.32%.

Each time the increase was nearly 1% within just a few months.

So, if history proves itself as a guide, we can’t expect these rates to last for long.

The latest report from the Federal Housing Finance Authority is hot off the press.  They rank 241 major metropolitan areas across the U.S. for yearly home price appreciation.

They show that, nationally, home prices have gone up 4.99% over the last 12 months.

Here’s how the major cities rank in Colorado among the 241:

#22 Greeley = 7.94%

#27 Colorado Springs = 7.64%

#63 Fort Collins = 6.34%

#133 Denver = 4.83%

#188 Boulder = 3.41%

The Case-Shiller Home Price Index is a well-known report in the real estate industry and a valuable way to gauge what is happening in various markets across the Nation.

The report tracks home price appreciation in the 20 largest markets in the country.

Their most recent report shows that, Nation-wide, home prices are up 2.1% year-over-year. Last year prices were rising at 6.3%. So, prices are still going up but not as fast as they were.

The city with the highest appreciation over the last 12 months is Phoenix with 5.8% growth followed closely by Las Vegas at 5.5%.

Denver came in at 3.4% which makes it tied for 8th place out of the 20 cities.

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