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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 66 June 2025 J O U R N A L Market Trends OPPORTUNITY ZONES: Q1 PRICE TRENDS ON THE UPSWING I n its Q1 2025 report, ATTOM examined eligible low-income Op- portunity Zones that Congress had designated for economic revitalization under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In this analysis, ATTOM examined 3,558 U.S. zones that had at least five home sales in Q1 2025 and had enough data to evaluate. According to the study, some 48% of Opportunity Zones nationwide with sufficient data to measure saw an increase in median single-family house and condo prices between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. This occurred as the median price throughout the country stayed con- stant. During an era when the average national price increased by 8%, medians increased annually in 59% of Opportu- nity Zones. "Home-value patterns inside Op- portunity Zones remain pretty much in lockstep 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 of 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." U.S. Highlights — Q1 2025 Report • In over half of the Opportunity Zones examined, median prices increased by more than 10% each year as the U.S. housing market boom entered its 14th year. • In 1,491 (48%) of the Opportunity Zones with enough data to examine, median prices for single-family homes and con- dos rose from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, while remaining unchanged or declining in 52% of the Opportunity Zones. • In 1,762 (59%) of those zones, medians, which are measured annually, stayed higher from the first quarter of 2024 to the same period this year. The research includes 3,558 Opportunity Zones, of which 3,120 had sufficient data to produce useful median-price comparisons between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025, and 3,004 had sufficient data to compare Q1 2024 with Q1 2025. • The quarterly and annual trends in Opportunity Zones were consistent with trends elsewhere: median prices increased by 48 and 59%, respectively, in the same percentage of census tracts outside of Opportunity Zones. • In 42% of Opportunity Zones, average values increased by more than 10% per year, while in 37% of areas outside the zones, this was not the case. • In just 47% of Opportunity Zones, where homes typically sold for less than $125,000 in Q1 2025, median prices increased annually, which is a persistent warning sign of problems. • Larger shares of the Opportunity Zone tracts with the lowest prices were still found in the Midwest in the first quarter of 2025. The Midwest had the highest median home values (61%), followed by the Northeast (42%), the South (39%), and the West (6%). Home Value Trends & Economic Patters — U.S. A long-term pattern of property values within Opportunity Zones closely following broader national price fluctu- ations for at least the previous four years was extended by those trends in and around low-income communities where the federal government provides tax ben- efits to encourage "economic rebirth." That has persisted whether there have been modest, moderate, or significant advances in the housing market.