Seattle area home values post first annual rise since 2007 – Puget Sound Business Journal

The Puget Sound area housing market outperformed the nation’s numbers last month, with home values posting their largest annual increase since local values began to slide five years ago.

Area home values in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties rose 0.1 percent in August compared to the prior month and were up 1.4 percent compared to a year ago. That’s according a new report from Seattle-based Zillow, an online residential listings service.

The last time there was a larger year-over-year increase in home values was during the boom in September 2007, when home values were up 1.9 percent, Zillow’s chief economist Stan Humphries said.

Annual home values in the Puget Sound area began rising this past June, up 0.2 percent, to register a gain for the first time since late 2007. Annual home values continued to climb in July, rising 1 percent.

“At this point we have eight months of improving home values and we feel the Seattle metropolitan area has bottomed out,” Humphries said.

Even though the Puget Sound area housing market went into the recession later than other markets, Humphries said, it is recovering at the same time.

National home values, which fell in August for the first time in nine months, slipped 0.1 percent from July. However, on a year-over-year basis, home values nationally were up 1.7 percent from August 2011.

“Home values took a small hit in August, but this shouldn’t be a cause for alarm,” Humphries said in a release. “The back half of the year is always softer than the other half, and this year is no exception.”

Home values in King, Snohomish and Pierce Counties are down 31 percent compared to their peak, putting the Puget Sound area in the middle of the national pack, compared to bubble markets such as Phoenix and Miami, where home values have plummeted 50 percent, and more robust markets such as Dallas and Denver, where values are down 8 percent to 12 percent from their peak.

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via Seattle area home values post first annual rise since 2007 – Puget Sound Business Journal.