Boulder Tops Colorado Cities for 1st Quarter Appreciation rates

With a one-year appreciation rate of 1.99 percent, Boulder was the highest-ranked Colorado city on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s listing of home appreciation rates for 294 metropolitans in the nation. Boulder came in twenty-third for the first quarter of 2009, while Denver-Aurora-Broomfield’s one-year appreciation rate of 0.80% came in at sixty-fourth and Fort Collins-Loveland’s rate of -0.12 percent was ranked ninety-third.

Though none of Colorado’s eight metros ranked made the top 20, they also did not land in the bottom 20 metros, either. Colorado Springs was the lowest-ranked Colorado metro at one-hundred and fifty-third; it had a one-year appreciation rate of -1.70 percent.

The Texas metro of Corpus Christie had the highest appreciation rate in the nation – 4.12 percent – and three other Texas metros made the top 20. Indiana, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Louisiana also had more than one representative in the top 20. California and Florida dominated the bottom 20 list, with Nevada and Arizona with one representative each making the list. Merced, Calif., whose home prices depreciated 37.80 percent from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009, pulled up the rear of the 294 metros.

Here’s a look at how Colorado’s and its eight metros’ home-price appreciation rates performed compared with the rest of the nation: