It’s not just the West Coast markets where home values are soaring.
Charlotte ranks among the top five U.S. metro areas for fastest-appreciating home markets, according to a new report by residential real estate website Zillow.
In the Queen City, home values escalated in September to $178,700 — at an annual rate of 9%. Charlotte trailed just three markets: Seattle, where values grew 12.4%; San Jose, Calif., at 10.3%; and Las Vegas, at 10.2%. Another Southern city, Orlando, Fla., came in fifth, posting value growth of 8.9%.
On a national level, home values increased 6.9% in September from the previous year.
“It might be easy to assume another bubble is emerging, with home values growing 10 or 12 percent per year, but don’t worry,” Zillow Chief Economist Svenja Gudell said in the report. “The market is reacting to basic economic laws, and is behaving exactly the way we would expect it to given good overall growth, limited supply of homes for sale and decent housing affordability thanks to low mortgage interest rates.”
Zillow also tracked markets with the highest rent increases year over year. While Charlotte doesn’t crack that list, the report does show that local rents were up last month 3.8% to an average of $1,282. Riverside, Calif., had the highest increase of 6% with an average rent of $1,833.
Inventory remained on the decline in the Charlotte metro — down 12.3% — as well as many other parts of the nation, according to Zillow’s report.
The latest gauge of home-price gains will be out next Tuesday with the release of the August S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index. In July, home prices in the Charlotte area jumped 6.4%.
Jenna Martin
