Rising home values have long been a dependable way to generate equity, and recent price increases have been stunning: In the second quarter of 2022, the median price of a new home in the United States — $414,000 — was 14 percent higher than it was a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.
But that’s just icing on the cake for people who have owned their homes for 10 years or more, according to a new study by Point2, which tracked median single-family-home prices from 2011 through 2021 in the 187 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Over that time period, the national median price of a single-family home more than doubled, from $166,200 to $353,600. The median more than tripled in nine of the metros, and more than quadrupled in two of them — Detroit, where it grew from $53,800 in 2011 to $245,700 in 2021; and Boise, Idaho, where it grew from $115,400 to $468,600.
At the bottom of the list was Peoria, Ill., where the median price rose about 9 percent from 2011 through 2021, inching up from $119,800 to $130,500.
Doubling, tripling and quadrupling values can be hard to wrap one’s head around. But the study found an evocative way to describe long-term price growth: by breaking it down day by day. Imagine finding $266 stacked up on the coffee table every single day from 2011 through 2021. That’s one way to envision price appreciation in San Jose, Calif., which had the greatest gain of all metros when measured in actual dollars. During that time, the median price there rose from $570,000 to $1.64 million — bringing that cash on the coffee table to a total of $1.07 million.
This week’s chart, based on Point2’s report, shows net daily gains in median home prices in the 20 U.S. metropolitan areas where they were highest.
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