Home price appreciation may be slowing down in several major U.S. markets, prompting analysis of price growth trends since the previous peak to today's pricing.
Meyers Research director of economic research Ali Wolf finds that broadly, home price appreciation at the national level has greatly benefitted existing homeowners, typically Generation X- and Baby Boomer-headed households, while first-time and trade-up buyers have had difficulty entering the market. Most of the markets with the greatest Recession-era price drops have fully recovered, or are just short of peak levels; Las Vegas, Orlando, and Riverside, Calif. are now more affordable than in 2006.
We use existing home prices to view overall trends given the larger sample size, but the same problems persist in the new home space. To adjust for affordability headwinds, builders are offering some incentives. To be clear, incentives are in the marketplace, but they are not pervasive. We connected with our experts from California to Florida to gain their boots-on-the-ground insight. The consensus was, there are some incentives, but it’s very specific to certain communities, for certain lots, at certain price points. The effectiveness of the incentives generally seems positive.