Home prices in Springfield have lagged behind the rest of the state over the past year, according to CoreLogic, a national real estate analytics firm. If experience is any indicator, however, that may not be a bad thing. From January 2015 to January 2016, Springfield home prices rose on average 0.6 percent, CoreLogic says, slower than the state average of 2.2 percent and well behind the national average of 6.9 percent. How could that be good news? It’s a reflection of the fact that Springfield isn’t a hot spot for the kind of real estate speculation that drove the housing bubble that popped in 2008 and plunged the economy into recession. Homeowners generally like when house prices increase, but too much too fast can indicate trouble. Consider that Springfield’s relatively stable residential housing market mostly avoided the deluge of home foreclosures that followed the economic collapse. In fact, Springfield’s foreclosure rate during the Great Recession was usually about half that of the national average. We’ll take slow and steady over fast and precarious any day.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2016.
