Denver the hottest U.S. housing market; DC price gains lag

WASHINGTON — The Mile High City is experiencing mile-high housing prices right now, with the median price of a house or condo that sold in Denver in May up 10.3 percent from a year ago.

That is the biggest annual gain in housing prices among the nation’s largest cities.

CoreLogic says the average year-over-year gain in May nationwide was 5.9 percent. Such gains have averaged between 5 and 6 percent for 22 consecutive months, CoreLogic says.

“The consistently solid growth in home prices has been driven by the highest resale activity in nine years and a still-tight housing market,” said CoreLogic chief economist Frank Nothaft.

While sales in the D.C. region remain brisk, price appreciation here has been muted.

The median price in Washington in May was up 2.1 percent from a year ago, the smallest gain among the nation’s biggest metro areas.

San Francisco and Los Angeles have both seen annual gains higher than the national average, with prices in May up 6.4 percent and 6.9 percent respectively.

The U.S. housing market will likely benefit further from the Brexit-stoked turbulence in financial markets, with rates on 30-yeaer mortgages hovering just above record lows. CoreLogic says it expects mortgage rates to move modestly lower in the near term.

And CoreLogic predicts housing prices will rise another 5.3 percent by May 2017.

Jeff Clabaugh

Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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