Zillow has called the housing bottom in its latest Real Estate Market Report.
Zillow joined the fray of optimism that has swept over real estate analysis the past few weeks with its latest Real Estate Market Report, stating that not only did housing values bottom in February of this year, but they have also risen for four consecutive months and posted their first annual increase in nearly than five years.
The news was particularly positive for Miami, which Zillow surveyed extensively for the report. Homes values in Miami have risen 4.7 percent quarter-to-quarter and 6.4 percent year-over-year, with some areas, such as Naranja, Fort Lauderdale, Deerfield Beach and Glenvar Heights showing quarterly increases of more than 10 percent.
Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, said housing’s positive performance in the past four months suggests the market has turned for the better.
“After four months with rising home values and increasingly positive forecast data, it seems clear that the country has hit a bottom in home values,” Humphries said. “The housing recovery is holding together despite lower-than-expected job growth, indicating that it has some organic strength of its own.”
Christopher Zoller, a broker associate at EWM International in Coral Gables-South Miami and Master Brokers Forum member, said the positive situation in Miami has been ongoing.
“We’ve seen this trend going on for months,” Zoller said, “and we’re absolutely thrilled.”
Demand, Zoller said, has been so high for property in Miami that inventory levels have fallen dramatically, and as a result, not only are prices rising, but some buyers are being left out of the equation if they don’t act fast enough.
“The poor buyers are scrambling,” he said.
Zoller added that though international buyers are getting all the attention, demand has also been strong from boomers downsizing to smaller residences and young professionals buying in Miami’s downtown, two groups that built up a considerable pent-up demand in the post-boom years that, in Zoller’s words, has “taken off.”
Nationwide, almost one-third of the 167 metros surveyed showed annual increases in home values, and going forward, two our of every five metro areas is expected to post increases in the coming year, with Phoenix (9.9 percent) and Miami (6.1 percent) leading the charge.
Though Humphries does expect values to taper off somewhat towards the end of 2012 (he expects a 1.1 percent national appreciation from June 2012 to June 2013), he is still optimistic for the market in 2012, even in its handling of distressed properties.
“[Foreclosures] will translate into more homes on the market by the end of the year, but we think demand will rise to absorb that, particularly in markets where there are acute inventory shortages now,” Humphries said.