Home prices in 10% of the nation’s top 200 housing markets have recently hit new peaks or are only a hair away, new data show.
Another 24 of the top markets are within 5% of their previous peaks, according to data provided to USA TODAY by real estate tracker Lender Processing Services.
Many of those cities are likely to hit new peaks this year, economists say, given projections for continued price increases.
The data show how far prices in many cities have rebounded since the historic housing bust after mid-2006 — and how far they still have to go in most cities. The figures also underscore the uneven impact of the housing bubble, and then bust, in different regions.
Dozens of markets where prices peaked in 2006 or earlier are still 25% to 58% below those plateaus, LPS says.
Many cities now at or close to previous highs never saw the price run-ups leading up to the bust that others did. They didn’t drop as far, so they have less of a climb back.
Of the cities within 5% of their previous peaks, none saw more than an 11% decline in home values from mid-2006 to the market’s bottom in early 2012, LPS data shows. Nationally, prices fell almost 28% during that time.