Chicago and New York City Areas Still Most At-Risk from Damage Connected toCoronavirusPandemic in Fourth Quarter of 2021; Other Vulnerable Markets Again Mainly Along East Coast; West Region Outside Pockets of California Remain Least Exposed
ATTOM, curator of the nation’s premier property database, released its fourth-quarter 2021 Special Coronavirus Report spotlighting county-level housing markets around the United States that are more or less vulnerable to damage from the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic still endangering the U.S. economy. The report shows that New Jersey, Illinois and parts of California had the highest concentrations of the most at-risk markets in the fourth quarter – with the biggest clusters still in the New York City and Chicago areas. The West, meanwhile, remained far less exposed outside of California.
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The fourth-quarter trends, which generally continued patterns from throughout the past year, revealed that New Jersey, Illinois and California had 31 of the 50 counties most vulnerable to the potential economic impact of the pandemic. The 50 most at-risk included eight counties in the Chicago metropolitan area, eight near New York City and seven sprinkled through northern, central and southern California.
Elsewhere, the rest of the top 50 counties were scattered mainly along the East Coast, including two of Delaware’s three counties and three counties in the Philadelphia, PA, metropolitan area.
Outside of California, no other western counties made it into the top 50 during the fourth quarter of last year. On the contrary, the West region again had the highest concentration of markets considered least vulnerable to pandemic-related damage.
Markets were considered more or less at risk based on the percentage of homes facing possible foreclosure, the portion with mortgage balances that exceeded estimated property values and the percentage of average local wages required to pay for major home ownership expenses on median-priced single-family homes. The conclusions were drawn from an analysis of the most recent home affordability, equity and foreclosure reports prepared by ATTOM. Rankings were based on a combination of those three categories in 575 counties around the United States with sufficient data to analyze in the third and fourth quarters of 2021. Counties were ranked in each category, from lowest to highest, with the overall conclusion based on a combination of the three ranks. See below for the full methodology.
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Disparities in pandemic-related risks to housing markets across the country remained in place during the fourth-quarter of last year even as a decade-long boom in the broader U.S. market continued roaring ahead.
Prices climbed more than 10 percent in most of the nation last year, both because of and in spite of the ongoing pandemic that slowed or idled major sectors of the economy in 2020. Throughout the past year, a surge of buyers has flooded the housing market amid a combination of historically low home-mortgage rates and a desire by many to trade congested virus-prone areas for the perceived safety and larger space offered by a house or condominium. As they have chased a tight supply of homes choked further by the pandemic, prices have soared.
Despite the continued price runups, a few signs of a possible market slowdown have emerged recently in the form of declining home affordability, slumping investor profits and rising inflation. The pandemic also remains a threat to the market as a third wave surges across the U.S.
With that danger still looming, the risk of a downturn remained higher in the fourth quarter of 2021 in counties with some combination of three warning signs: housing that is unaffordable for average workers, higher levels of foreclosures and larger portions of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages.
“The U.S. housing market keeps powering on despite of the Coronavirus pandemic that’s still raging across the country. Indeed, home prices keep rising in part because of the crisis,” said Todd Teta, chief product officer with ATTOM. “Nevertheless, the virus remains a potent threat to the broader economy and the housing market, with some of the same counties we’ve seen in the past continuing to look vulnerable to potential downturns. No immediate warning signs hang over any one part of the country, but pockets are more vulnerable to the market taking a turn for the worse.”
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