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52 | TH E M R EP O RT O R I G I NAT I O N S E R V I C I N G DATA G O V E R N M E N T S E C O N DA R Y M A R K E T THE LATEST DATA Home Schooled: Property Values and Education A report explored how access to top- tier education and home values are interconnected. A ccess to the best qual- ity of education might well depend on the value of your home, ac- cording to a study by Zillow. The latest Zillow Housing Aspirations Report, a semi-annual survey of 10,000 Americans in 20 large metro areas, found that residents in areas with lower home values perceived worse access to educa- tion and jobs. Among amenities like access to education, transit, job op- portunities, and other amenities, the report indicated that educa- tion saw the biggest gap in the perceived access between areas where median home values were in the lower one-third of all neighborhoods (bottom tier) and those where the median home values were in the highest one- third (top tier). It found that less than 40 percent of the people in bottom- tier areas said they had rela- tively good access to high-quality education in their neighborhood, versus 70 percent in the top- tier. With a 57-point difference, the largest gap was found in St. Louis with only 27 percent of bottom-tier neighborhood residents reporting good ac- cess to high-quality education, compared to 81 percent in the top tier. Other Midwest metros, including Detroit and Chicago, also had large perceived gaps in educational access, with "point differentials of 40 and 36 between bottom- and top-tier neighbor- hoods, respectively." Among cities where this gap is the narrowest, the report said that equal footing was only be- cause access to top-quality edu- cation was perceived to be weak all around. The report noted that in cities like Las Vegas and Tampa less than 50 percent of respondents from all value tiers expressed satisfaction with their educational access. However, Los Angeles was an exception where "good perceived access to education" was shared across the tiers. It was the only metro where more than half of the residents from bottom-tier neighborhoods said they were satisfied with their access. "No matter where you live, odds are you think your neigh- borhood is meeting your basic needs," said Skylar Olsen, Director of Economic Research and Outreach at Zillow. "But schools can be harder to evaluate, and a lot depends on what each indi- vidual student's needs are. " At the other end of the spec- trum, the report indicated that access to public transit systems is better in less valuable neighbor- hoods with residents in commu- nities with lower home values saying they had relatively good access to public transportation in 19 of the 20 metros surveyed. The Real Estate Bubble: Then and Now A decade after the bubble burst, some metros have rebounded more than others. W hen the real estate bubble burst in 2009, home values plummeted driv- ing home values into a Great Recession. The good news is, over the last 10 years housing prices have rebounded, in some places beyond their 2006 highs, but not every market has recovered ac- cording to a study from Lending- Tree. The company evaluated the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. to see where housing prices have recovered the most since the height of the recession, and where the markets are still struggling. The study also looks at the changes in income and unemployment rates over the last decade. Most likely due to an increase in incomes and falling unemploy- ment rates, the average median home values have increased by nearly $50,000 across the 50 largest metros. Unemployment rates have fallen by an average of 4.7 percent- age points. Detroit's drop of almost 10 percent is the largest in the na- tion, while Houston's 1.7 percent- age decrease is the smallest. The median household income has increased by an average of $11,344 since 2009. San Antonio was the only metro where the median household income declined. San Jose, California, San Francisco and Los Angeles have recovered the most since 2009 with the average housing price increase of $243,600. According to the study, the boom may be in part due to tech companies like Google and Apple bringing high paying jobs to these metros. The only metros where median prices fell are Hartford, Connecticut, Chicago, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Baltimore, where home prices have fallen nearly $6,700. In many of these areas, a lack of strong employ- ment opportunities and out- of-state migration could be the biggest factors behind the drop. This study shows how sig- nificantly the housing market can change in a single decade so that current homeowners and potential home buyers can better understand the way the market fluctuates. Using caution based on the past, homeowners are still taking advantage of the present opportunities.