HOME-PRICE TRENDS IN OPPORTUNITY ZONES STILL FOLLOWING NATIONAL PATTERNS DURING FIRST QUARTER OF 2025

Yahoo

22-05-2025

Price Gains Inside Opportunity Zones Targeted for Economic Redevelopment Settle Down Along with Broader U.S. Housing Market During Slow Winter Period
IRVINE, Calif., May 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property data, and real estate analytics, today released its first-quarter 2025 report analyzing qualified low-income Opportunity Zones targeted by Congress for economic redevelopment in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (see full methodology below). In this report, ATTOM looked at 3,558 zones around the United States with sufficient data to analyze, meaning they had at least five home sales in the first quarter of 2025.
The report found that median single-family home and condo prices increased from the fourth quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025 in 48 percent of Opportunity Zones around the country with enough data to measure. That happened as the national median price remained the same.
Medians were up annually in 59 percent of Opportunity Zones during a time when the typical nationwide price went up 8 percent.
As the U.S. housing market boom continued into in its 14th year, median prices grew more than 10 percent annually in close to half the Opportunity Zones analyzed.
Those trends, in and around low-income neighborhoods where the federal government offers tax breaks to spur economic revival, extended a long-term pattern of home values inside Opportunity Zones closely tracking broader nationwide price shifts for at least the last four years. That scenario has held regardless of whether the housing market has seen small, moderate or robust gains.
Despite prices continuing to rise in a majority of Opportunity Zone markets when measured year over year, the first-quarter trends again were mixed, with typical values again rising far more often in higher-priced zones than in the very lowest-priced neighborhoods. That continued to show more significant weakness at the very bottom of the U.S. housing market, suggesting that those areas are reaping the fewest benefits from rising home values and could be more vulnerable if the broader market surge stalls.
Nevertheless, the latest patterns mark yet another sign that some of the most distressed communities in the nation are showing economic strength, or limited weakness, compared to other markets around the country.
By several important measures, Opportunity Zones continued to enjoy even better price trends than the nation as a whole during the first quarter of 2025. For example, annual median price increases bested typical nationwide gains in a slightly larger portion of Opportunity Zones than elsewhere.
"Home-value patterns inside Opportunity Zones remain pretty much in lock-step with the rest of the country, just as we've seen ever since we started looking at this niche of the market. From one to another, those very local markets remain volatile, with troubling signs in the very lowest-priced areas. But the big picture shows remarkable, and mostly positive, consistency," said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM. "This likely reflects the ongoing short supply of homes for sale across the country and rising prices, which pushes marginal buyers to roll the dice on locations with varying levels of economic distress."
Barber added that "the home-buyer money flowing into these communities shows enduring potential for them to turn around, providing solid foundations for investors looking to use the Opportunity Zone incentives."
Opportunity Zones are defined in the Tax Act legislation as census tracts in or alongside low-income neighborhoods that meet various criteria for redevelopment in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. Census tracts, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, cover areas that have 1,200 to 8,000 residents, with an average of about 4,000 people.
Amid varying levels of economic challenges, typical home values across wide swaths of Opportunity Zones remained far below those around most of the nation in the early months of 2025. Median first-quarter prices inside 80 percent of the zones with enough data to measure stood below the U.S. median of $355,000. That was about the same portion as in other time periods since 2020. In addition, median prices remained less than $200,000 in almost half the zones.
Considerable price volatility also continued inside Opportunity Zones, with median values either dropping or increasing by at least 5 percent in nearly three-quarters those locations from late 2023 to early 2024. That again likely reflected small numbers of sales in many zones.
Still, when taken as a whole, the latest overall trends in Opportunity Zones still generally matched the nationwide path of home prices during the first few months of 2025.
High-level findings from the report:
Median prices of single-family homes and condos increased from the fourth quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025 in 1,491 (48 percent) of the Opportunity Zones around the U.S. with sufficient data to analyze, while staying the same or decreasing in 52 percent. Measured annually, medians remained up from the first quarter of 2024 to same period this year in 1,762 (59 percent) of those zones. (Among the 3,558 Opportunity Zones included in the report, 3,120 had enough data to generate usable median-price comparisons from the fourth quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025; 3,004 had enough data to make comparisons between the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025).
Both the quarterly and annual trends in Opportunity Zones matched patterns in other areas: median prices rose quarterly and annually in the same portion of census tracts outside of Opportunity Zones - 48 percent and 59 percent.
Typical values were up more than 10 percent annually in 42 percent of Opportunity Zones, compared to 37 percent of neighborhoods outside the zones.
However, in a continuing potential sign of trouble, median prices were up annually in only 47 percent of Opportunity Zones where homes commonly sold for less than $125,000 during the first quarter of 2025.
Among states that had at least 25 Opportunity Zones with enough data to analyze during the first quarter of 2025, the largest portions of zones where median prices increased annually were in Indiana (medians up from the first quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025 in 75 percent of zones), New York (72 percent), Missouri (70 percent), Colorado (69 percent) and New Jersey (65 percent). States where prices were up annually in the smallest portion of zones included Nevada (median prices up in 44 percent of zones), Washington (49 percent), Florida (49 percent), Iowa (52 percent) and Tennessee (52 percent).
Of the 3,558 zones in the report, 1,097 (31 percent) had median prices below $150,000 in the first quarter of 2025. That was down from 34 percent of zones with sufficient data a year earlier and 57 percent five years ago. Another 556 zones (16 percent) had medians in the first quarter of this year ranging from $150,000 to $199,999.
Median values in the first quarter of 2025 ranged from $200,000 to $299,999 in 24 percent of Opportunity Zones while they topped the nationwide first-quarter national median of $355,000 in just 20 percent.
The Midwest continued in the first quarter of 2025 to have larger portions of the lowest-priced Opportunity Zone tracts. Median home values were less than $175,000 in 61 percent of zones in the Midwest, followed by the Northeast (42 percent), the South (39 percent) and the West (6 percent).
Report methodologyThe ATTOM Opportunity Zones analysis is based on home sales price data derived from recorded sales deeds. Statistics for previous quarters are revised when each new report is issued as more deed data becomes available. ATTOM's analysis compared median home prices in census tracts designated as Opportunity Zones by the Internal Revenue Service. Except where noted, tracts were used for the analysis if they had at least five sales in the first quarter of 2025. Median household income data for tracts and counties comes from surveys taken by the U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov) from 2019 through 2023. The list of designated Qualified Opportunity Zones is located at U.S. Department of the Treasury. Regions are based on designations by the Census Bureau. Hawaii and Alaska, which the bureau designates as part of the Pacific region, were included in the West region for this report.
About ATTOMATTOM powers innovation across industries with premium property data and analytics covering 158 million U.S. properties—99% of the population. Our multi-sourced real estate data includes property tax, deed, mortgage, foreclosure, environmental risk, natural hazard, neighborhood and geospatial boundary information, all validated through a rigorous 20-step process and linked by a unique ATTOM ID.
From flexible delivery solutions—such as Property Data APIs, Bulk File Licenses, ATTOM Cloud, Real Estate Market Trends—to AI-Ready datasets, ATTOM fuels smarter decision-making across industries including real estate, mortgage, insurance, government, and more.
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