Nation recovers housing value

Metro area short of record, Zillow says

The U.S. housing market has regained all of the value lost during the housing crisis, but metro Milwaukee still hasn’t, a report released Friday says.

An analysis by the real estate research firm Zillow found that the total value of U.S. housing stock rose to a record $29.6 trillion this year.

The national housing market saw a strong year of appreciation, growing 5.7% in value, or $1.6 trillion. The national market now has recovered the $6.4 trillion in value it lost between 2006 and 2012 as the housing market collapsed and the country fell into a fierce recession.

However, even though the total value of housing stock in metropolitan Milwaukee grew by $7 billion this year, or 6.9%, to $110 billion, it hasn’t regained all the value lost in the downturn. It’s still $3 billion short of the record value of homes in metro Milwaukee in 2007, Zillow said.

Zillow said that while several U.S. markets are now more valuable than they were at the height of the housing bubble, about 60% are below the maximum values reached during the bubble years. Chicago, for instance, is still about $134 billion below the highest value it reached in 2006, Zillow said.

The Los Angeles and New York metro areas hold the highest shares of the country’s overall housing value, at 8.6% and 8%, respectively. The next most valuable metro area is San Francisco,

worth 4.2% of the overall housing value.

Zillow Chief Economist Svenja Gudell said rising prices could knock some buyers out of the market.

“The total value of the housing stock grew nearly 6% this year, a pace that will likely mean some American families are priced out of homeownership,” Gudell said.

A separate report last week by the Wisconsin Realtors Association showed that through the first 11 months of 2016, the median home sale price in the state was 5.4% higher than at the same time in 2015.