There's no point in sugarcoating it: The U.S. economy is a hot mess. The continuing coronavirus pandemic has led to scores of business closures, the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, and the steepest economic contraction on record.
Yet, despite it all, the U.S. housing market has come back—and then some. After monthslong pauses in many parts of the country, bidding wars and offers over asking price have returned. Cooped-up buyers seeking larger homes and wanting to cash in on record-low mortgage interest rates are battling it out over a very limited supply of properties for sale. Median list prices are up more than 9% over last year, a result of the lack of homes on the market, according to weekly realtor.com® data. (The median home price nationally rose to an all-time high of $349,000 in July.)
“Housing tends to be immune from economic downturns and slowdowns," says realtor.com Director of Economic Research Javier Vivas. That's excluding the past recession, which was caused by a housing bubble. “Right now we’re seeing markets recover faster where they’re able to contain the virus better. Markets with strong technology sectors have been more resilient.”
So where are these comeback kids—the housing markets rebounding the most since the start of the COVID-19 crisis?
Realtor.com found that more than half of the largest metropolitan areas have recovered from their pandemic lows.
A score of 100% means the market is performing the same as it was in January. Anything higher shows how much better it's doing. (The list was narrowed to just two metropolitan areas per state to ensure geographic diversity.)
These are the markets that have recovered the most since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis:
- Boston, MA, 122.52%
- Seattle, WA, 113.73%
- New York, NY, 112.74%
- Philadelphia, PA, 112.35%
- Denver, CO, 111.66%
- San Francisco, CA, 109.27%
- Los Angeles, CA, 108.78%
- Las Vegas, NV, 107.710%
- Rochester, NY, 106.61%
- Memphis, TN, 105.9%
