by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
But low-tier prices of single-family houses in the vast New York City metro explode by 15%, powered by fleeing Manhattanites?
The headlines are everywhere: The housing market has gone nuts with silly bidding wars and ludicrous price increases. Record low interest rates last year and $3 trillion of the Fed’s miracle moolah triggered that phenomenon, along with people leaving some big expensive cities for the suburbs, outer areas, and distant places, whose prices soared under the influx, while many leavers haven’t yet put their vacant old homes on the market, hoping to ride up the price surge, thereby constraining inventory for sale. But not all things are equal, as we’ll see with condos and houses by price tiers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and the New York City metro, based on today’s S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index.