This Can Not Be Right

Homes have not recovered since the housing bubble burst.

Trulia has just released its latest new study, and it has some eyebrows raising. Pulling from the study, we can look at a homeowner in Fresno, California and one from San Francisco. Not much distance separates these two cities, but San Francisco has seen its property values skyrocketing since the recession. Unfortunately, Fresno is lucky to have more than 2 percent of its homes get back to or above the pre-recession prices. Why?

If one were to look at the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index and the FHFA House Price Index, they would see numbers that show that the country has recovered from the last housing bubble burst. Trulia, on the other hand, says that this is not the whole story.

Looking across the country, it appears that 1 in 3 homes have reached a new peak in value. At the same time, larger tech based areas such as the Bay Area and Denver and job centers like Dallas and Nashville have experienced an explosion to new highs. Trulia’s report shows more losers than winners across the country and some of these losers are losing at an unprecedented rate. The report shows a little less than 30 metro areas have not even seen 10 percent of its home values recover. Las Vegas, for example, shows less than 1 percent.

The fact that there are so many home values that have not recover from the previous recession is leading some to say that there should not be any talk about a current housing bubble. Adding to that is the fact that there are fewer homes on the market since the bubble burst of 2012.