FHFA.gov recently released their first quarter home price index and Colorado home appreciation topped the list for the year ending March 31, 2015. Each quarter FHFA, the federal agency in charge of housing publishes a report that compares the home appreciation in each state as well as the largest 275 metropolitan areas. For the one year period ending March 31st homes in Colorado had appreciated on average 11.16%.
Within Colorado they track the six largest metropolitan areas. Here are their statistics from the recent report:
Name 1 year appreciation 1st Qtr. 2015 5 year appreciation
Boulder 7.52% .45% 20.75%
Colorado Springs 6.01% 2.06% 6.67%
Denver 10.16% 1.45% 27.07%
Fort Collins 9.04% 1.41% 22.31%
Grand Junction 4.93% 1.9% -6.46%
Pueblo 4.84% .51% 2.89%
The top twenty metropolitan areas for appreciation over the past year have been:
- Naples, Florida – 20.06%
- Port St. Lucie, Florida – 13.23%
- Reno, Nevada 12.30%
- Palm Bay, Florida 11.78%
- Daytona Beach, Florida 11.29%
- Miami, Florida 11.28%
- Fort Myers, Florida 10.73%
- Flint, Michigan 10.66%
- Punta Gorda, Florida 10.6%
- San Francisco, California 10.57%
- Houston, Texas 10.43%
- Anacortes, Washington 10.41%
- West Palm Beach, Florida 10.3%
- Denver, Colorado 10.16%
- Salinas, California 10.11%
- Las Vegas, Nevada 10%
- Austin, Texas 9.84%
- Vallejo, California 9.54%
- Gainesville, Georgia 9.53%
- Santa Cruz, California 9.48%
Here is a graph comparing Boulder’s appreciation to that of the United States. Over the past five years homes have appreciated on average by 14.23% in the United States and in Boulder they have gone up by 20.75%.
Below is a map showing the one year home appreciation for each state. The map says it’s seasonally adjusted. Either the adjustment is fairly large or the areas outside of the main metropolitan areas (for example the ranches and mountain resorts) must have had very high appreciation to bring up the average of the state to above Denver’s one year average.
To me the numbers for Boulder seem low. It will be interesting to see how they measure the second quarter for us since we are seeing a noticeable jump in prices this spring.
