New Jersey, Illinois and parts of California had the highest concentrations of at-risk housing markets due to the pandemic in the fourth quarter, according to an ATTOM report. The biggest clusters are in New York City and Chicago
The fourth-quarter trends show New Jersey, Illinois and California had 31 of the 50 counties most vulnerable to the potential economic impact of the pandemic. The 50 most at-risk included eight counties in the Chicago metro area, eight near New York City and seven in northern, central and southern California.
The rest of the top 50 counties were scattered mainly along the East Coast, including two of Delaware’s three counties and three counties in the Philadelphia metro area.
“The U.S. housing market keeps powering on despite of the coronavirus pandemic that’s still raging across the country. Indeed, home prices keep rising in part because of the crisis,” ATTOM Chief Product Officer Todd Teta said in a release. “Nevertheless, the virus remains a potent threat to the broader economy and the housing market, with some of the same counties we’ve seen in the past continuing to look vulnerable to potential downturns. No immediate warning signs hang over any one part of the country, but pockets are more vulnerable to the market taking a turn for the worse.”
More than half (28) of the 50 counties most vulnerable in the fourth quarter to housing market troubles connected to the pandemic were in the New York, Chicago and Philadelphia metro areas, as well as in Delaware and California. They included eight in Chicago and its suburbs, eight in the New York City metro area and three in the Philadelphia area. Two counties in Delaware were among the top 50.
Forty-two of the 50 counties least vulnerable to pandemic-related problems in the report were in the South, Midwest and West. Just eight were in the Northeast. Oregon had eight of the 50 least at-risk counties, Washington had four, and Colorado had three. Two were in the Knoxville, Tenn., metro area, two were in the Buffalo, N.Y., metro area and two were in the Grand Rapids, Mich., area.
Others among the top-50 least at-risk counties included Maricopa County (Phoenix), Ariz.; Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minn.; Travis County (Austin), Texas; Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), N.C., and Suffolk County (Boston), Mass.