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Real estate prices in Buffalo area garner national attention

The Buffalo region has made it on the top 10 listof most recovered housing markets in the nation.

HSH.com, the nation’s largest publisher of mortgage information in the country, acknowledges that the fact that housing prices in the Buffalo area never witnessed the severe market crash  that crippled real estate in many other regions a decade ago is a key reason the city landed in the number nine spot on the list.

Vice President Keith Gumbinger told WBFO that because Buffalo suffered little fallout from the real estate slide, the city has had the easiest road to recovery.

“Without a boom and bust,” said Gumbinger, “the market didn’t have to recover to catch back up again and

just cruised along and so have become one of the more recovered market places.”

Denver, Austin and Dallas top the list of metropolitan areas that have recovered the most.

Although market prices are increasing at a steady rate across the country, a future drop in real estate prices drop is always a possibility. But Gumbinger added that Buffalo could see little or no impact if a future downturn occurs.

Credit HSH.com
Keith Gumbinger

“Could we see prices in some marketplace cool? That’s certainly possible. But not having a boom or bust cycle during the last downturn -- or not an appreciable downturn -- that suggests that even if there were a downturn in prices, that would be a mild one.”

Real estate market prices are increasing across the country. Regions that are far from reaching their peak price points have still seen an exponential amount of growth in housing market prices over the past decade.

Market prices are at all-time highs, according to Gumbinger, but there are regions across the country that still have a long way to come before they meet their peak price points,

“Our own analysis of data from the Federal Finance Housing Agency indicates we’re only up to about 60 percent or so of markets having fully recovered peak values from the last decade.”

Cities such as Cleveland and El Paso, Texas are in the group of cities that have nearly recovered housing markets and could have fully recovered markets within the next year.

Las Vegas tops the list of the cities that still have longest way to go before housing prices reach their early peaks.