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The U.S. still is feeling the effects of widespread housing bust, but a new report serves as a
reminder that large swaths of the nation didn't experience a boom in home prices and hasn't
suffered from the bust.
New York Federal Reserve staffers Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz released a report
highlighting the stability of upstate New York's housing markets. The research notes that while
the rest of the U.S. saw a real-estate boom and bust, upstate New York was largely insulated
from the cycle.
“Despite upstate's long-term weak economic growth and population loss, Buffalo, Rochester, and
Syracuse all ranked in the top 10 percent of metro areas in terms of home price appreciation in
2009, with Buffalo ranking sixth overall,” the authors wrote.
But upstate New York isn't alone in bucking the national trend. “Most U.S. metro areas actually
experienced more moderate increases in house prices than the nation between 2000 and 2006. In
fact, 249 of the 383 metropolitan areas tracked by the Federal Housing Finance Agency saw
price increases below the national rate of 8.1% during the boom,” Abel and Deitz said. Many of
these areas, in turn, didn't experience the resulting bust.
The authors say a lack of nonprime lending in these areas played a prominent role in insulating
them from the boom and bust. “It is likely that causation runs in both directions - an increase in
nonprime lending led to more significant home price appreciation [in boom areas], and more
rapid home price appreciation led to a rise in nonprime lending,” the authors stated.
A correction from the boom years was clearly the driving force behind a national decline in
home prices, and some regions with little to correct have been largely insulated. However, the
trouble in the housing market may not end as the market returns to normal levels. Many metro
regions may have been spared a precipitous decline in home prices, but the recession sparked by
the drop has left almost no one unscathed. As every part of the country faces middling economic
growth and continued long-term unemployment, a second leg down in the housing market could
be more geographically widespread.