here. / " title="HOME PRICES across the United States fell, Clear Capital reported Thursday. For a larger version click here. /"/>PROVIDENCE – Homes prices in the Providence metropolitan area climbed during the last four months, according to an index released by Clear Capital on Thursday.
Providence metro area home prices increased 2.8 percent during the four months ending Jan. 31 compared with the three prior months. (Clear Capital, an Irving, Calif.-based real estate data tracking firm, calls this comparison “quarter over quarter” and said it adds the additional month to smooth out the data.)
The growth made the Providence metro area – which also includes Fall River and New Bedford – the sixth-best performing market in the nation under Clear Capital’s “quarter over quarter” comparison method.
Topping the company’s Home Data Index was the Cleveland, Ohio, metro area where the index increased by 8.1 percent.
Nationally, prices slipped 1.6 percent. But Clear Capital said that U.S. home prices stopped declining in early January and rose for the first time since mid-August 2010.
“This recent national change in price direction is encouraging for the overall housing sector, yet it is still too early to determine whether this current uptick in home prices is a temporary reprieve or the start of a sustained recovery,” said Alex Villacorta, a senior statistician at Clear Capital.
The company attributed “one primary driver” of rising prices to lenders selling fewer homes they repossessed from homeowners who defaulted on their mortgages. Such sales typically sell at the low end of the price spectrum and drag down prices of surrounding homes and the area’s average sales price.
