Home price increases show some strength

After five years of trailing the national trend in home prices, the Albuquerque metro area’s single-family housing market finally outperformed the nation as whole in January by posting a year-over-year increase of 6.1 percent in home prices, according to CoreLogic’s Home Price Index.

January’s 6.1 percent increase surpassed the average increase nationwide of 5.7 percent and represents the metro’s strongest gain in average home price for any month since June 2007, when it registered 7.1 percent, according to data from the Irvine, Calif.-based provider of real estate data and services.

“That’s very good news for everybody,” said Paul Wilson, president of the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors. “We’ve been lagging everywhere else for from a year to 18 months. What they’ve done in the past, we’re doing now.”