The Tale of Two Cities: Home Prices

Felix over at Portfolio.com has an interesting post looking at how the best and worst performing zip codes in various cities have fared over the past year.



So what to make of this. Lets go to Felix:

One big thing to learn from all this is that it's silly trying to hedge downside in the value of your home by using the CME's housing futures. It's entirely possible that you could short your city's house prices only to see your city's housing prices go up and the value of your own home go down -- thereby losing on both legs of the trade.

And the other thing to learn is that there are still entire zip codes, like Preston Hollow in Dallas, which have massively bucked the national trend and have seen house prices rise by a third over the course of the past year. Yes, we're in a nationwide housing recession, but not all houses in the nation are falling in value. Exactly where you are within a metropolitan area can mean the difference between soaring values and slumping ones.

Source: Portfolio.com

UPDATE: Please note that this chart reflects the year over year change in ASKING prices, thus the numbers may be slightly skewed. Another reminder that it is more important to look at the pattern that the data presents rather than the exact figures.