Spokane home values rise slightly

Home values in the Spokane area are running 2 percent below last year, though they’ve made modest gains in recent months, according to a quarterly report from the real estate Web site Zillow. Zillow’s estimates – based on home sales, appraisals and other factors – show a Spokane market in generally better shape than the national one, with improving home values, fewer foreclosure sales and fewer homes sold for a loss than the nationwide averages. Zillow attempts to estimate home values for every home in a market, as opposed to real estate figures that show home sales in any given time period. It estimates that Spokane-area homes lost 2 percent of their value in the third quarter of 2009, compared to last year. Nationally, home values were down 6.9 percent. But home values in Spokane were up 1.3 percent in the third quarter, as compared to the second quarter, according to the firm’s estimates. Of all Spokane home sales in September, 7 percent were homes that had been foreclosed, compared to more than 21 percent nationwide. Also in September, about 9 percent of sellers took a loss, compared to 27 percent nationwide.