Home Value Forecast Shows Higher Priced Homes in the Los Angeles and Bay Areas Have Again Been Leading the Market's Recovery

February's Update highlights the differences in single-family prices per square foot (PPSF) and the speed of rising and falling home prices in several California markets; top ten list also includes New England and Midwest Metros

WALTHAM, Mass., - Pro Teck Valuation Services' February Home Value Forecast (HVF) Update examines how higher priced homes have historically been a good leading indicator of the overall real estate market and have been leading in this recovery as well.

"The residential real estate market outlook continues to improve in 2013. But as more sales and data become available, real estate markets exhibit varying degrees of predictability. Many of the interior U.S. markets exhibit low volatility and are relatively easy to forecast. Others on the East and West Coast show more volatility due to the combination of constrained supply and generally rising demand," said Tom O'Grady, CEO of Pro Teck Valuation Services. "Home prices in these markets rise and fall faster than in markets where new supply can be more easily added such as the more open Midwest U.S."

HVF tracks a number of market indicators to forecast where home prices are headed, and along with HVF partner Collateral Analytics examines the single family price per square foot (PPSF) for different priced markets in the Los Angeles County areas ofManhattan Beach, Lancaster and Burbank from 1970 to 2012. The authors chose these markets because they are representative of low, average, and high-priced cities in this area, which resulted in a clear pattern over the years of the higher-priced market moving first, followed by the average and then low-priced ones.

"Most newsworthy is the latest up move in the Manhattan Beach market which has pushed prices to all-time high levels," saidMichael Sklarz , Principal of Collateral Analytics and contributing author to Home Value Forecast. "This should be viewed as confirmation that the Los Angeles county real estate market is in the early stages of a new upward-cycle in home prices."

This month's Home Value Forecast update also includes a listing of the 10 best and 10 worst performing metros as ranked by our market condition ranking model. The rankings are run for the single family home markets in the top 200 CBSAs on a monthly basis to highlight the best and worst metros with regard to a number of leading real estate market indicators, including: sales/listing activity and prices, months of remaining inventory (MRI), days on market (DOM), sold-to-list price ratio and foreclosure and REO activity.

"Three of the top ranked markets are in Southern California while another two are in Massachusetts. A new entrant to the Top 10 list this month is Indianapolis-Carmel," added Sklarz. "Like a number of Midwest markets, Indianapolis did not participate in the nationwide housing bubble and its home prices have been among the most affordable in the country for many years. It's also a market with compelling rental yields for both institutional and individual single family home investors."
February's top CBSAs include:


Boston-Quincy, MA

Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA

Indianapolis-Carmel, IN

Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA

Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA

Raleigh-Cary, NC

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA

Wichita, KS

Colorado Springs, CO

San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX

"Top markets from late last year such as Phoenix and Sacramento are no longer on the list because their year-over-year sales counts are down, which is due to the lack of inventory rather than a decrease in demand," added Sklarz. "The bottom-ranked metros also represent an interesting mix with two being in the upstate New York area and two in Louisiana with higher months of remaining housing inventory."
The bottom CBSAs for February were: Cape Coral-Fort Myers , FL

Rochester, NY

Baton Rouge, LA

Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY

Greenville-Maudlin-Easley, SC

Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL

Mobile, AL

Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR

Shreveport-Bossier City, LA

Spokane, WA

About HomeValueForecast.com

HomeValueForecast.com was created from a strategic partnership between Pro Teck Valuation Services and Collateral Analytics. HVF provides insight into the current and future state of the U.S. housing market, and delivers 14 market snapshot graphs from the top 30 CBSAs.


Home Value Forecast delivers a monthly briefing along with "Lessons from the Data," an in-depth article based on trends unearthed in the data.


HVF is built using numerous data sources including public records, local market MLS and general economic data. The top 750 CBSAs as well as data down to the ZIP code level for approximately 18,000 ZIPs are available with a corporate subscription to the service. To learn more about Home Value Forecast and Pro Teck's full suite of residential real estate valuation products visit us atwww.proteckservices.com. You can find Pro Teck on Twitter at @ProTeckServices.