People who sold their homes in 2016 would agree with the notion that homeownership is a good investment.
Zillow reports that sellers last year gained, at the median, $39,900 on their properties from when they bought it to when they sold it, which equals an annual return of 3.4 percent. The median length of owning a particular house was seven years and five months for sellers last year.
Sellers in expensive coastal markets such as San Jose, San Francisco, and Los Angeles had gains of $200,000 last year, and sellers in markets including San Francisco, Tampa, and Denver had annualized returns of 9 percent or better.
At the other end, owners who sold in Baltimore and Memphis saw the smallest total and annualized returns — $5,000 (0.9 percent average annual return) and $6,800 (1.0 percent average annual return), respectively. They also had some of the shortest holding periods: Baltimore sellers sold after owning their homes on average for only three years and five months.
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