By Dees Stribling | MHN Online
Home value specialist Zillow said on Friday that the pace of residential price appreciation nationwide slowed down in the third quarter of 2013, and it even turned negative in some markets. The U.S. Zillow Home Value Index stood at $163,000 as of the end of the third quarter, up 6.4 percent year-over-year and 1.2 percent from the end of the second quarter.
But there was no change in national home values in September compared with August, and the monthly pace of home value growth has declined in each of the past three months. Among the top 30 largest metro areas covered by Zillow, half showed negative monthly appreciation at the end of the third quarter. Until July, all of those markets recorded positive monthly appreciation, and none exhibited a monthly pace slower than 1 percent month-over-month.
“Far from being a negative sign, we’re relieved to see more noticeable signs of cooling in the market,” Stan Humphries, chief economist, Zillow, says. “If home values continued to rise as they have, relatively unchecked, we would almost certainly be headed into another bubble cycle, and nobody wants that.”
