We’ve come a long ways since the market crash, but new research suggest we’ve still a ways to go.
Asking prices may be up in Chicago by 9.6 percent, but the market remains undervalued to market fundamentals, according to a new report from Trulia.
Titled the “Bubble Watch,” the report analyzes home prices in the nation’s metro areas and compares them with market fundamentals, all in the hope of – as the title would reveal – catching the next housing bubble before it becomes unruly.
Chicago Undervalued to Market Fundamentals
Chicago, the Bubble Watch found, is still 13 percent undervalued, which actually makes it the most undervalued large metro area in the nation; for comparison’s sake, Chicagoland was 31 percent overvalued in 2006’s first quarter, when the housing bubble was at its peak.
Of course, being undervalued is not necessarily a bad thing. With unaffordability pushing many metro areas out of reach for consumers, it will be very interesting to see how businesses and homebuyers respond to Chicagoland and other Midwestern marketplaces, as the coasts continue to grow out of reach.
Take a look at our graph below to see how our local housing values compare with the rest of the nation:
Undervalued to fundamentals? What about the the nation’s worst credit ratings for the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois. Indeed, debt securities that are near or at junk status. Decades of fiscal mismanagement that has left us with an unsolvable black hole problem. That is indeed a fundamental.