LA, CA Markets Showing Signs of Property Appreciation

Some of the nation's hardest hit areas in terms of property value declines may be on the comback, according to Veros Real Estate Solutions, Santa Ana, Calif., an industry leader in enterprise risk management and collateral valuation services. The company recently released an update to its U.S. real estate market forecast, VeroFORECAST.

“More coastal California markets are showing signs of improvement,” said Eric Fox, Veros’ vice president of statistical and economic modeling. “California’s Inland Empire area, including Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario, is showing signs of modest appreciation, joining the state’s strongest metro region, San Diego. Colorado is beginning to look good again to buyers, with three cities among the top ten.”

Fox said that Louisiana’s Shreveport and Bossier City area represented a new entry among the top five positive trending areas and that the Houston metro area is also demonstrating modest improvement. He added that the company could only speculate on the effects, if any, that will result in the residential real estate market from the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf. None of the firm's zip code level models which are on the coast of the impacted coastal areas are yet showing significant forecast differences from those zip code models that are further inland and less impacted.

According to Veros, the projected five strongest markets are Shreveport / Bossier City, LA +4.2%, San Diego / Carlsbad / San Marcos, CA +3.4%, Riverside / San Bernardino / Ontario, CA +3.2%, Amarillo, TX +3.2%, and Houston / Sugar Land / Baytown, TX +3.1%.

The five projected weakest markets are Chico, CA -8.9%, Deltona / Daytona Beach / Ormond Beach, FL -8.3%, Reno / Sparks, NV -7.8%, Vero Beach, FL -7.8%, and Palm Bay / Melbourne / Titusville, FL -7.7%.