As important as it is as a housing market, the metro New York area (which includes Long Island, northern New Jersey, and parts of Pennsylvania) has not been particularly robust. Home prices have barely recovered from the trough last March, according to Case-Shiller. And they’re still down a quarter from their peak in 2006.
Job growth is just a little below the one-year and three year national average.
Investors may be particularly interested in the New York metro area because it has the largest supply of foreclosures of any of RealtyTrac’s Top 10 metro areas – 97 months – and they’re selling at a 40 percent discount to other homes. That’s probably because a second wave of foreclosures is hitting the market in judicial states such as New York and New Jersey. Nationally, bank repossessions fell 17 percent last year, but they rose 55 percent in New Jersey, according to RealtyTrac.
