On Monday, RealtyTrac, a real estate information company and online marketplace, released its first-ever Housing Market Recovery Index (Housing MRI) report. The Greenville-Mauldin-Easley market ranked No. 11 of the top 20 housing markets showing signs of recovery. Spartanburg ranked 19th.
“The U.S. housing market has clearly shifted to recovery mode over the past 18 months, with home prices consistently rising and foreclosures falling closer to pre-housing bubble levels,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “Still, symptoms of the distress that plagued the housing market over the past seven years continue to linger, particularly in the form of a high percentage of underwater borrowers and distressed sales. This lingering distress is creating an uneven pace of recovery across different local markets.”
The index was calculated based on seven different factors relating to the health of the real estate market: unemployment rate, underwater loans percentage, foreclosure activity percent change from peak, distressed sales percent of total sales, institutional investors share of total sales, cash purchases share of total sales, and median home price percent change from bottom. Those seven factors were indexed for each market with national averages as a baseline, and all seven indexes were averaged to calculate a total recovery index. RealtyTrac ranked 100 major U.S. metros based on this total recovery index.
“Median home prices have bottomed and are now rising in all 100 ranked markets,” Blomquist noted. “Likewise, foreclosure activity is past its peak in all 100 ranked markets — although foreclosure numbers have been rebounding recently in some areas where a more lengthy judicial process created a backlog of pent-up foreclosure activity.”
