Americans' Home Wealth Recovers $7 Trillion as Prices Firm

March 10, 2016 — 8:00 AM EST
Updated on March 10, 2016 — 12:45 PM EST

Record home values from Charlotte to Dallas to San Francisco
Recovery helps offset stock market losses, aids consumers

In March 2014, Steven and Bernadette Doherty paid $183,000 for a two-bedroom home in Charlotte, North Carolina, $6,000 more than its appraised value. Today, similar houses in the neighborhood are being priced at $300,000 or more.

“We bought at the right time,” said Bernadette, a retired Wells Fargo & Co. information technology worker. “In retrospect, we were lucky as prices have gone up so much more.”

Home-price appreciation is a welcome development for households whose nest eggs were shattered by the residential real-estate bust that began a decade ago.

The 2006-2009 housing slump reduced wealth by $7 trillion. Since then, the value of homeowners’ equity in real estate has more than doubled from a low in the first quarter of 2009, a Federal Reserve report today showed. What’s more, housing wealth is poised to reach a new record as early as the second quarter, say economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Pantheon Macroeconomics Ltd.



Improving property values are allowing homeowners to shake off recent stock-market volatility and keep spending. From the end of 2013 through last year’s fourth quarter, home equity climbed 22 percent compared with a 11 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The stock index has declined 3 percent this year.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/americans-housing-wealth-recovers-7-trillion-as-prices-firm