Real Estate
Click Here To See How Much Your Laguna Beach Home Value Has Changed Since 2004
A Washington Post analysis looks at housing prices before and after the financial collapse.
It’s been a rollercoaster decade for property values across the nation and especially in Orange County where home values rode the real estate bubble into the stratosphere only to fall hard during the recession. Fueled largely by investors and cash buyers, the region led the housing market’s recovery to the point where most Orange County residents can ill-afford the median price of a home in Orange County. But exactly what does that mean for your home’s value?
Has your property value increased or decreased since 2004, when housing prices began to bubble only to collapse in 2007? How has your area recovered since then?
Find out what's happening in Laguna Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Those are the questions The Washington Post set out to answer, not just for the country overall but for individual towns and neighborhoods, a total 19,000 U.S. zip codes. In Orange County, the findings are surprising. For example a neighborhood in Irvine saw home values climb by 46 percent since 2004, but just next door in certain Lake Forest zip codes, homeowners saw only a 5 percent increase in the same timeframe.
The results: One of the more impressive and useful interactive maps you'll ever use.
Find out what's happening in Laguna Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Post staffers Ted Mellnik, Darla Cameron, Denise Lu, Emily Badger and Kat Downs used data from Black Knight Financial Services to compare home prices from 2004, just as real estate prices started to skyrocket, to 2015.
The data does not account for inflation but does correct for foreclosures and distressed sales to better reflect home values, the Post said.
In Brooklyn, New York, for example, home prices have increased by 146 percent since 2004. But in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb outside of Atlanta, prices are down 25 percent.
