Spring buying season starts early in the West region of the US

The Spring buying season has arrived early in certain parts of the United States with the West seeing the strongest growth, according to the latest data.

National quarter on quarter price growth reached 1% for the first time in 2017, a slight uptick from 0.9% in March, while annual growth remains steady at 6.3% with no change from last month. San Antonio continued to be the fastest growing major metropolitan area in the nation with quarter on quarter growth of 2%.

The West saw prices rise by 1.3% quarter on quarter, up from 1% the previous month and year on it up 8.1%, the index report from property firm Clear Capital shows. It means that the current Western quarterly and annual growth rates are significantly higher than in April 2016 when rates were 0.9% and 7.4% respectively.

Fresno was the second fastest growing metro area in the nation, up from the number four spot last month with quarter on quarter price growth of 1.9% and annual price growth of 9.6%.

However, the report points out that distressed saturation in Fresno is still relatively high for a Western metro at 11.5%, higher than the regional average by 3.2%, which could point to a pocket of opportunity for investors who have been driven out of the bay area by high prices.

Other regions show little change since last month, indicating that the typical rush of Spring buyers has not entered these markets yet. However, growth in the South, the Midwest, and the Northeast was still considerably healthier than in 2016 in the first quarter.

The data shows that in the South prices increased by 0.9% quarter on quarter, a difference of 0.3% from 0.6% last year, while in the Midwest growth was up 0.5%. The Northeast has seen the most marked quarterly growth improvement over 2016, up 0.9% compared to just 0.2% last year.

According to Allison Whealton, senior economic analyst at Clear Capital this year is shaping up to be a more aggressive growth year than 2016 as national quarter on quarter growth is double what it was in April 2016. She pointed out that distressed saturation is also down significantly in the last year, dropping to 11.8% this month from 14.7% in April 2016.

‘Growth in the West is beginning to pick up as Spring buyers start to enter the market early, boosting price growth in the region, but other areas of the country don’t seem to have thawed out from the cold winter season just yet,’ said Whealton.

‘It has been an impressive start to 2017 for the housing market. Nationally, home prices have increased twice as fast in the first quarter of 2017 as they had in the first quarter of 2016, and with the typical Spring buying season just on the horizon, the next few months could be shaping up to be an impressive start to the busiest buying season,’ she added.