The connection between jobs and home sales has been well documented. But how about the correlation between employment and house prices?
While it may be a stretch to couple the two, Housing Intelligence, the independent research division of the Hanley Wood publishing empire, believes they link up well.
In the firm's latest on-line newsletter, it found that median new home prices surged in the three metro areas in which the job market has improved the most year-over-year in the first quarter. It also discovered that prices in the bottom three worst-performing big city markets of 750,000 people or more declined in the same period.
Milwaukee had the top performing job market between March last year and the same month this year, with a 2.8% gain. During the same period, house prices in the Wisconsin city advanced a whopping 39%.
Similarly, Dallas, which nailed a 2.4% increase in employment, saw its median house price jump 19.6%. Houston, meanwhile, saw a 2.1% jobs gain and a 13.2% rise in its median house price.
At the other end, the bottom three worst performing big time markets were Sacramento, Baltimore and Atlanta, which all lost jobs. And all three saw their median new home price fall.
A coincidence? Who knows. But "jobs and housing are joined at the hip, with jobs leading the way," HI contends. "Regions that are creating jobs and keeping steady employment are seeing the positive results spill over into the local housing market which is why it is important for labor market conditions to continue to improve."
