According to the federal jobs report from January, job additions continued, but it isn’t the only sign of the continuing recovery; many homeowners who lost value in their homes during the Great Recession are now seeing their equity restored. NerdWallet used data from Zillow to figure out which cities saw the largest increases in home value since 2009, and they made a few interesting discoveries.
Researchers found that the areas with the largest home value recovery tended to be more affluent and have smaller populations. It was also determined that the highest recovery areas were clustered, with the top 10 cities in California’s Silicon Valley and Florida’s Miami area. While warm climates may have been part of the reason for the increase in home value, another major factor appears to have been tech industry growth. Seven of the top 10 cities were in the Silicon Valley area, indicating that the tech industry may have been the biggest contributor to the housing recovery.
Palo Alto, California, was found to be the city with the largest increase in home value since 2009, which is unsurprising as it is home to Stanford University and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and home values in the area increased by 75 percent. However, even California cities that were not in the top 10 saw significant growth in the prices of homes. Manhattan Beach home prices rose from a median value of $1,351,000 at the beginning of 2009 to $1,923,300 at the end of 2014, and Hermosa Beach saw prices increase from $935,200 to $1,312,100 during the same time frame.
