St. Patrick's Day may come the same time each year, but luck can be all about timing.
And if you were going to buy a home in say, Norcross, November of 2012 was the luckiest time to buy – that was the moment when median prices hit their post-crash bottom: $72,100, says Zillow, the real estate research and data firm.
Since then, the median has soared to $124,800 – a 73.1 percent improvement.
That makes Norcross home prices the fastest-rising in metro Atlanta, according to Zillow.
Of course, it’s easier to rise a lot if prices start low, and for some areas prices were pretty darned low after the housing market crashed in 2007 and the economy plunged into recession. But starting in 2012, things started to improve.
After Norcross, the next four hottest municipalities in the region:
— Riverdale, up 71.8 percent to $79,200.
— Lithonia, up 66 percent to $100,900.
— Stone Mountain, up 58.5 percent to $114,100.
— The City of Atlanta, up 55 percent to $182,100.
Zillow says it obtains the data from public records.
Other researchers – like Case-Shiller – sometimes produce different calculations, sometimes because they define the metro area a little differently. The Atlanta Board of Realtors, for example, on Tuesday will issue a report putting the median home value at $216,000 for metro Atlanta.
According to Zillow's number, overall metro Atlanta prices hit bottom in April 2012 and have risen 35.1 percent since then. Atlanta ranks 17th among the nation's metro areas, according to Zillow.
The fastest climb has been in Las Vegas, where the median home price is up 74.9 percent since hitting bottom in January 2012.
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