WASHINGTON -- Where have housing values appreciated most over the past two decades? California? Texas? Somewhere else in the Sunbelt?

None of the above.

According to the latest tally from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the winner is -- drum roll please -- Massachusetts.

Massachusetts? Yup, that's right. On average, folks who bought a house in Massachusetts in 1980 and sold it sometime in the first quarter of this year turned a tidy little profit of 364.1 percent.

New Yorkers did almost as well, according to OFHEO, which regulates the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-chartered corporations which bring liquidity to the mortgage market. Over the 21-year period, people in the Empire State saw their housing investment grow by an average of 277.8 percent.

What about California? Home owners their didn't fair badly. Their investments tripled. But Rhode Islanders did a little better at 213.8 percent, as did New Jerseyites and New Hampshirites at 208.6 percent and 202.1 percent, respectively.

OFHEO's quarterly surveys are considered far more accurate gauges of housing price appreciation than other government studies because they tracks repeat sales and refinancings on the same single-family properties.

Also, since the data is based on the combined mortgage records of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together have the nation's largest database of mortgage transactions, it is a much broader measure of the movement in house prices.

The two government sponsored enterprise keep the money flowing to the mortgage market by purchasing loans from local lenders and packaging them into securities for sale to investors throughout the world.

The national average appreciation rate for the 21-year period was 156.3 percent, and only 21 states did better.

And what about those other Sunbelt states where everybody seems to be heading? They didn't do nearly as well.

In Florida, owners only doubled their money. Well, the appreciation rate averaged 122.7 percent in the Sunshine State, if you want to be exact. In Arizona, it was 116.4 percent. But in Texas, the rate was a mere 73.4 percent.

The worst rate of appreciation, though, was in Oklahoma, where someone who bought a house in 1980 earned only an average of 56.4 percent when they sold this year. And Wyoming and Alaska weren't far behind at 61.2 percent and 65.6 percent, respectively.

For more articles by Lew Sichelman, please press here.

Published: June 11, 2001

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

When Lew Sichelman first started writing about housing in 1969, he was the youngest real estate writer in the country. Now, 37 years later, he's one of the oldest -- and most decorated. He has been rated the top housing columnist in the country by the National Association of Realtors as well as by his peers in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Indeed, NAREE has recognized his work on numerous occasions. One year - due to his advancing age, he can't recall which one - he earned top honors in the annual NAREE Journalism Contest in three out of the four major writing categories. It was the first time one writer has won so many NAREE awards in a single year. Known for his ability to make even the most difficult topics understandable, Sichelman also has been honored by the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He began providing in-depth coverage of and consumer-oriented information about housing and housing finance at the Washington Daily News, where he was real estate editor. He held that same position for nine more years at the Washington Star, which purchased the News in 1972. The Star, a so-called "writer's newspaper" which also had the misfortune of being an evening paper, was put out of its misery in 1981, and Sichelman, who had begun self-syndicating his column in 1978, decided to become a full-time columnist. Today, his column, "The Housing Scene," is distributed by United Media to newspapers throughout the country. He also is on the staff of National Mortgage News, an independent newspaper which is considered the bible of the mortgage business. And he writes for numerous other publications, including MarketWatch.com, where he answers readers questions once a week, Sports Illustrated (don't ask), RealtyTimes.com, BigBuilder and others. Sichelman is married, the father of five and grandfather of eleven.