Winners & Losers of the Housing Recovery

This week's S&P/Case-Shiller home price index detailed a decent 5% jump in values nationwide, the biggest improvement in six months. But, as always, some of the report's 20 featured cities fared much better than others.

February 2014 to 2015 appreciation was greatest in Denver (10%), San Francisco (9.8%) and Miami (9.2%). Denver and San Francisco were the only two cities on the index in which (non-seasonally adjusted) February prices climbed by more than 1% from the previous month (2% by the Bay and 1.4% in the Mile High). The lower end of the ranking was perhaps more surprising, with growth slowest in the major real estate capitals of New York (2.5%) and, at the very bottom of the list, Washington, DC (1.4%). Cleveland was sandwiched between them with a 2.3% gain.

But Las Vegas, despite some signs of improvement, is probably still in the worst shape of all indexed areas. It joined San Diego and Portland, Oregon in the small circle of cities where annual appreciation fell between January and February 2015. And the market remains at just 58.5% of its pre-crash peak, marking the slowest comeback of the bunch. Prices nationwide are 10% below their July 2006 high-water mark, although Denver and Dallas having surpassed values from those heady days before the Great Recession. 

Looking beyond the sprint to the marathon, Los Angeles claimed the highest annual rate of appreciation, 4.3%, between 2000 and February of this year.