I was looking over Buffalo Business First this morning, and the cover story caught my eye: "WNY's Hottest Real Estate Markets was the headline." I was curious to see where our local market fit in because over the last five years, looking at median home prices, the Olean market has gone up a massive 58.99%, from $62,608 5 years ago to $99,543 this year. That was a number that even surprised me a little. The market has increased dramatically, and with good reason, as the price appreciation in the Olean area was nearly stagnant (with some ups and downs) from 2000-2017. Rental prices rose, and the market reacted as people bought the inventory. We are still seeing the effects of low inventory from the interest rates being incredibly low. Looking at inventory from June 2023, we are still down 10.4% from June 2022.
This study that looked at all of the zip codes in Western New York looked at something called "home price momentum." This is a metric that they made up, but it looks like a decent indicator for what they were trying to determine: "What markets are still seeing price appreciation from last year and five years ago?"
After looking at our numbers, I thought Olean, Portville, Allegany, and Hinsdale would still be near the top of the list. Still, the rest of the region has been performing at just as high of an increase as we are, and our market has slowed down slightly more in the past year than other parts of WNY. Here is a breakdown of how our local zip codes did in the 180 zip code study.

Numbers from Buffalo Business First (https://www.bizjournals.co/buffalo/news/2023/09/08/hottest-housing-markets-western-new-york.html)
The study favored the change from last year more than the 5-year change in value. One of the most significant contributing factors is the high taxes in our area. If you look at the other zip codes, the top-performing zip codes are Niagara Falls and Buffalo, which have a much lower tax rate than our area.
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