CHART 2
I believe at least in Michigan it comes from a sub market. People who have lost the 500K home are looking for the 100K home. This has driven the price up and started bidding wars for lower priced homes. I have seen it here.
The nation, and particularly its economists and the public need to quit looking at “national” statistics on this stuff.
1. They hide where the real problems are.
2. They hide where the biggest problems are.
2, They hide the extent to which a few “worse case” (in a housing ‘recession’)/”best case” (in a housing “boom”) local and/or regional housing markets can skew AVERAGES so much as to imply “national gains” are evident and/or “national problems” are evident, at times when a majority of local/regional housing markets are stable.
I remember reading once that when the housing bubble burst, a mere handful of states accounted for 60-80% of the “market value increases”, leading up to the end of the bubble, and 60% or more of the problem loans affecting “toxic” assets.