Pittsburgh housing prices hit peak in 1Q

[FarCenter]

Pittsburgh Business Times - by G. Scott Thomas bizjournals

Housing values have slipped in three-quarters of America’s major metropolitan areas, but pockets of prosperity still exist, including the Pittsburgh area.

A new bizjournals study indicates that the nation’s strongest housing markets are located in Texas, the mid-South and the industrial Northeast.

Pittsburgh housing prices have grown 1.1 percent in the past year, according to first-quarter 2009 data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Housing prices hit a peak in Pittsburgh in the first quarter, the data showed. Over a five-year-span, Pittsburgh saw housing prices in the first quarter rise 17.6 percent. Over the past decade, Pittsburgh housing prices are up nearly 47 percent.

<SNIP> http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2009/07/13/daily48.html

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Note that Pittsburgh is not in the Case Schiller housing price index that is widely touted as authoritative in the media. In fact, CS does not include metro areas such as Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Baltimore, Columbus, Cleveland, Louisville, Indianapolis, Memphis, Kansas City, St Louis, Houston, and San Antonio.

[imdjh]

1. That's good news, of course, but 5 years ago Pittsburgh's RE market was in the toilet

While most other places were soaring. I remember seeing houses in Pittsburgh on Realtor dot com for prices so low that I thought they were perhaps annual rentals. Not being familiar with neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, I felt certain that these properties were no bargain, even at $10K to $40. Detroit prices.

Anyway, good news for Pittsburgh, back then I felt certain that a city with that much existing infrastructure and classic architecture was ripe for reclamation by those looking for the next ground floor opportunity. I wouldn't live there due to the weather, but if one has a reason to be in that region, the opportunity would seem obvious. Timing is everything, I suppose, but so is momentum.

[BlooInBloo]

2. Keep in mind that "peak" in da burgh is cheap by much of the country's standards.