Fort Myers home market back on top

Remember the real estate boom when the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area consistently ranked at the top for home-price appreciation?

Well, it's back.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's house-price index in the third quarter shows Cape Coral-Fort Myers was ranked third in house price appreciation over the past year out of 304 metropolitan areas with 7.57% growth. It was the only Florida area in the top 10.

Only Phoenix (9.53%) and Bismarck, N.D. (8.04%) beat the Fort Myers area on this score, the latter because of its booming energy industry.

Before you get too excited about Cape Coral, though, consider that over the last five years the same house-price index has dropped 43% (Phoenix fell 42%). In other words, there's a lot of catching up to do.

The FHFA tracks the mortgage market and the house-price index is a broad measure of the movement of single-family house prices.