Detroit home sale prices continue to improve

Detroit’s real estate market posted some of the strongest price gains in the nation in 2012.

The just released S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index charts home sale prices in the nation’s twenty largest cities.

Detroit home sale prices rose more than 13 percent last year, the third highest percentage increase in the survey.

Craig Lazzara is the head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices. He compiled the report. Lazzara says, despite the rise in prices, homes in Detroit are still selling for about what they did in 1997. 

“Since ’97, Detroit went up. Peaked at about the same time when the rest of the country did in ’06. And then came down much harder,” says Lazzara, “That’s why the recovery has been, in the historical context, been weaker, despite your strong year of 2012.”

Lazzara predicts Detroit home prices will continue to rise in 2013.