This year’s holiday market defied expectations as homebuyer demand continued through December, lifting U.S. home values by 8.4 percent year over year to $266,104, the highest annual increase seen since January 2014, according to a new report from Zillow.
Zillow determines “typical home value” based on the Zillow Home Value Index estimate for any given region, which is a weighted average of the middle third of homes in that region.
The U.S. saw a 3.2 percent home value growth over the last quarter, the greatest growth that Zillow has seen since it began tracking the Zillow Home Value Index in 1996.
The Sun Belt in particular saw robust growth, especially in Austin, Texas, where home values grew 5.3 percent from the quarter before. Phoenix, Arizona; San Diego, California; and Salt Lake City, Utah; also all saw significant growth at 5.1 percent from the previous quarter.
The number of “million-dollar cities” in the U.S. surged 17 percent year over year during a period of pandemic-fueled buying, leading to the greatest net gain in such cities in at least a decade, according to Zillow.
Zillow’s analysis, which was released on Monday, revealed that there are now 45 more cities in the U.S. with a typical home value of at least $1 million than there were at the end of 2019, bringing the total in 2020 to 312. In contrast, 2019 actually saw a net loss of the number of million-dollar cities. That year, home values appreciated at their lowest annual rate since 2013.
Por Insurify
In these cities, the value of a typical home saw great heights in 2020.
It would be an understatement to say that 2020 has given us a lot to look back on. The unique circumstances of this year, primarily shaped by the coronavirus pandemic and its resulting changes to our everyday lives, have had interesting and somewhat surprising effects on real estate markets across the nation.
Our relationship to home has certainly intensified in 2020, as shelter-in-place orders have kept us inside more than ever. Likewise, across the country, housing markets have witnessed the effects of these policies: Insurify’s analysis on cities with the greatest pandemic real estate booms found that between April and July 2020 across metropolitan areas in the United States, the average rate of home sales month to month was up overall, at 14.89 percent, exceeding the previous year’s rate by 66 percent (the average rate of home sales month to month was 5.21 percent in 2019). More and more