Still a long way to go for R.I.

Home prices slow to recoverWhen combined with the steep run-up in prices in the first decade of this century, the Great Recession dealt a sharp blow to the housing market in the Providence-Warwick-Fall River metro area, one that it has not been able to recover from yet, as measured by Black Knight Financial Services' Home Price Index. / Source: Black Knight Financial Services
Home prices slow to recoverWhen combined with the steep run-up in prices in the first decade of this century, the Great Recession dealt a sharp blow to the housing market in the Providence-Warwick-Fall River metro area, one that it has not been able to recover from yet, as measured by Black Knight Financial Services' Home Price Index. / Source: Black Knight Financial Services

There is no doubt that the residential real estate market in the Providence-Warwick-Fall River metropolitan area is recovering from the collapse of the market. Recent reports from the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, CoreLogic and Black Knight Financial Services show a positive trend.

The issue, however, is that while some communities across the nation are setting new highs for home values, the Providence metro is still 17.6 percent below its June 2006 peak.

In fact, according to Black Knight, if you bought the average home in the fall of 2008, your home is just now valued at what you paid for it, roughly $254,000. Taking inflation into account, you have to go back to 2007 to find the same value, since a dollar today is worth 11 percent less than it was eight years ago. The only problem with that is the fact that the average home sold for about $281,000 at the end of 2007.

Viewed through the inflation lens, if you bought the average home at the 2006 peak for the average price of $310,000, you would need a home valued at $368,900 today to just break even in value.

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Will the region ever return the value to homeowners that they put into their abodes? Barring some unforeseen spike in the local real estate market, that is not a good bet in the short term. And the long term is not knowable. Gold anyone? •

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