Coronavirus Pandemic – How the Pandemic has Impacted the Major Housing Markets

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The Phoenix housing market continues to be the standout leader with 12% growth since Jan-2019. Boston, Los Angeles, and Miami have also outperformed the national average. On the other hand, New York and Chicago remain the laggards, flatlining for the last 18 months. 

Despite the statutory forbearance (in place until 12-31-2020) and contrary to the massive media hype, the national average has shown marginal growth, inching up a mere 1.3% in 2020. FYI -- this analysis is based on Case-Shiller monthly indices (published today), which are the most widely-watched and followed housing metrics in the analytics world today.

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The above correlations matrix nicely summarizes the market interactions. Since Phoenix, Boston, LA, and Miami have been moving up in tandem, they share very high colinearity (correlation coefficients above 0.90) among themselves. In contrast, they have much lower correlations with Chicago and New York as the latter have stagnated. 

Likewise, considering Chicago and New York have flatlined, they have the highest collinearity (0.9187) between them. 

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The above graph portrays the competition between Phoenix and New York -- the best and worst-performing markets. While the Phoenix market has produced near-perfect linear growth, surging steadily from 188 to 210, the New York market has moved sideways, remaining range-bound between 200 and 205. 

Given the most recent trend, New York must stay above the 198-200 support level, breaching which it may quickly spiral down to 190.

Stay safe!

Data Source: 

Case-Shiller Housing index (as of 09-29-2020)

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com