Are Houston Homes Worth Less Than Before the Housing Market Crash?

A decade after the Housing Market Crash, two out of three homes in America still aren’t worth as much as they were in 2007. How does the Houston real estate market compare to the rest of the nation? The answer may surprise you.

The nationwide statistics seem to paint a rosy picture of the current real estate market. According to popular measures such as the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index and the FHFA House Price Index, average housing prices have not only recovered, they are reaching new highs.

But those numbers are for the country as a whole. A closer look at individual cities tells a different story.

According to a new study from the real estate website Trulia, the Recovery has been strikingly uneven. Only 34.2 percent of American homes are worth as much as they were before the recession.

Houston Housing Market Forecast

Houston Housing Market 2017 data indicates that 80.1 percent of homes have recovered to their pre-recession peak value. About one in five Houston homes are worth less than they were before the foreclosure crisis.

The median value of an Houston home was $160,618 in March 2017. Compared to the pre-recession peak median value of $141,937, the average home has gained more than $18,000 in value.

But the rest of the country isn’t faring as well.

10 Cities Suffering the Worst Real Estate Recovery

Since the housing bubble burst, the recovery in the housing market has been remarkably uneven. In the cities hit hardest, less than 5 percent of homes have returned to their pre-recession peak value.

Here are the 10 cities with the lowest rates of recovery:

1. Las Vegas, NV
2. Tucson, AZ
3. Fresno, CA
4. Camden, NJ
5. Fort Lauderdale, FL
6. Bakersfield, CA
7. Deltona, FL
8. New Haven,CT
9. Orlando, FL
10. Phoenix, AZ

At the top of the list, Las Vegas has been the hardest hit. Home value recovery in the last decade has been negligible. More than 99 percent of Las Vegas homes are still worth less than they were before the recession.

The rest of the cities on the list aren’t doing much better. Less than 3% of the homes in Fresno, Tucson, and Camden have recovered the value they lost in the recession.

10 Cities with the Best Home Value Recovery

At the other end of the real estate spectrum, red-hot markets such as San Francisco and Denver have delivered soaring real estate values. More than 98 percent of the homes in those metro areas have reached or exceeded their pre-recession peaks.

Here are the top 10 recovering cities:

1. Denver, CO
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Oklahoma City, OK
4. Nashville, TN
5. Fort Worth, TX
6. Colorado Springs, CO
7. Wichita, KS
8. Dallas, TX
9. Tulsa, OK
10. Honolulu, HI

Outside these pockets of rising prices, however, the real estate picture across the nation is largely bleak.

The Mostly Coastal Housing Market Crash

According to recent data from Trulia, areas with the worst recovery rates are focused along the coasts. The north Atlantic seaboard, especially from Boston to Washington D.C., has seen very little recovery overall. Florida and California have also been particularly hard-hit, aside from isolated pockets of recovery.

Further away from the coasts, however, the picture changes dramatically. At least half of the homes in the West and Midwest have recovered their values since the recession.

When Will Houston Homes Recover Full Value?

While it’s impossible to predict what will happen to Houston home values in the future, the numbers don’t look promising. Since April 2012, the recovery rate has been climbing about 5 percent per year. If that rate continues, 100% of homes won’t reach their full value until the year 2025.