Guest Blogger: Dr. Edward Graham, Professor of Finance, Cameron School of Business (This post was originally shared on WilmingtonBiz.com on August 15, 2018)

The Housing Bubble and the Real Estate Market Recovery

The U.S. residential real estate market has been a leading topic in the news over the last decade or more. With increasing mortgage delinquencies in late 2007, and the bursting of the real estate bubble soon thereafter, home values across the U.S. began an historic decline. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index, in Table I below, captures both the escalation in home values between 2000 and 2006, the correction in house prices as the housing bubble burst, and the recovery, on average, of the housing market across the US by mid-2018. Prices, on average across the US, more than doubled in the years ending in the spring of 2007. In the Cape Fear Region, using an admittedly informal but representative “index” created using home sales data provided by the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors (WRAR), prices increased over 75% in the years ending in the spring of 2007. Prices then fell across the local market, but have since recovered. Few expected the recovery of the real estate market, in either Southeastern North Carolina or across the nation, to be as rapid as it has been.