(Bloomberg) -- In March 2014, Steven and Bernadette Doherty paid$183,000 for a two-bedroom home in Charlotte, North Carolina,$6,000 more than its appraised value. Today, similar houses in theneighborhood are being priced at $300,000 or more.

“We bought at the right time,” said Bernadette, a retired WellsFargo & Co. information technology worker. “In retrospect, wewere lucky as prices have gone up so much more.”

Home-price appreciation is a welcome development for householdswhose nest eggs were shattered by the residential real-estate bustthat began a decade ago.

The 2006-2009 housing slump reduced wealth by $7 trillion. Sincethen, the value of homeowners’ equity in real estate has almostdoubled from a low in the first quarter of 2009, Federal Reservedata show. What’s more, housing wealth is poised to reach a newrecord as early as the second quarter, say economists at theFederal Reserve Bankof St. Louis and PantheonMacroeconomics Ltd.

Improving property values are allowing homeowners to shake offrecent stock-market volatility and keep spending. From the end of2013 through last year’s third quarter, home equity climbed 20%compared with a 4% gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

“The increase in housing wealth is a kind of stealth offset tofalling stock prices,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist atPantheon Macroeconomics, who predicts record home equity valuesnext quarter. “Home ownership is much wider than stock ownership.The consumption effect from a given rise in holdings has beenbigger for homes.”

Some cities, including Charlotte, are already seeing prices atall-time highs. Home values in Dallas, Denver, and SanFrancisco and Portland, Oregon, all hit records in December, whilethey’re down less than 1%t in Boston from an August peak, accordingto S&P/Case-Shiller indexes. About 38% of 87 U.S. metropolitanareas were in record territory last year, data tracker RealtyTracfigures show.

The housing bust, and the resulting recession that was the worstsince the 1930s, has prompted 5.6 million American households tolose homes through foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. At it’sworse, more than a quarter of homeowners had paper losses as theirmortgages exceeded the value of their properties.

Fewer foreclosures

With some buyers having made minimal down payments, it only tooksmall price declines to leave mortgages under water. Now, with therecovery in home values, that carnage has dissipated. Foreclosureswere filed on just 95,186 properties in January, an almost 10-yearlow, RealtyTrac data show.

Even in the worst-hit markets, home equity is being restored.Just 8.5% of properties had so-called negative equity in the fourthquarter, with debt exceeding their value, according to a reportThursday by consumer analytics firm CoreLogic Inc.

Related: The housing game has changed. Are you playing towin?

The number of homeowners with at least 20% equity is “risingrapidly,” Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive officerof CoreLogic, said in a statement. “In 2016, we expect home equitylevels to continue to build.”

For all the gains, the recovery in home equity has been unevenand narrower than in the 2002-2006 housing boom, said WilliamEmmons, senior economic adviser at the St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household FinancialStability.

“The wealth from housing has shifted from a broad swath to moreconcentration among families who are older, better educated, higherincome, white and increasingly Asian, and who live more along thecoastal areas,” Emmons said.

Gains have been less than complete in some of the cities thatwere at the center of the housing bubble.

In Las Vegas, housing prices are 38% below the level reached inApril 2006, according to the Case-Shiller index. Homes in Miami,Tampa and Phoenix are all fetching at least 25% less than they didat their peaks. Even so, property values in Las Vegas haverecovered 61% from their low.

“We don’t want to return to peak — that was crazinesshere,” said Stephen Miller, economist at the University of Nevada,Las Vegas. “The housing price recovery has been nice. What we haveis a goldilocks — not too much, not too little.”

“Underwater” homeowners are still an isolated concern. InNevada, almost one-fifth of properties were upside down, followedby Florida, Illinois and Arizona. Among 10 large metro areas, Miamihad the largest share of properties with negative equity— about 22% in the fourth quarter, according to CoreLogic.

“People are living with it, and waiting for things to getbetter,” said Michael Orr, real estate professor at Arizona StateUniversity in Tempe. “The market is back to stable. It was the peakthat was abnormal.”

Related: Millennial homebuyers choose suburbs as urban U.S.prices climb

Greg Zorn, a real estate investor in Naples, Florida,bought a two-bedroom duplex in 2006 for $310,000 and has rented theproperty for a decade. Ten years ago, Naples was ranked by IHSGlobal Insight economists as the most overvalued housing market inthe nation, after prices surged 140% from 2001.

Zorn, 70, thought he had made a “pretty good deal” in amarket where investors lined up to buy properties. Then the marketcratered. “We tried to sell it and there was no activity,” he said.With prices having recovered most of the losses, he has put theproperty on the market for $280,000.

North Carolina

In Charlotte, price gains have been led by in-townneighborhoods, which have seen “huge gains,” said Mark Vitner, asenior economist at Wells Fargo Securities who lives in the city.“Charlotte did not see home prices fall all that much during therecession and the recovery here has been very strong.”

Doherty moved in-town because she and her husband enjoyedamenities and events including nice restaurants and professionalfootball and basketball. They also wanted to be closer to theirgrandchildren.

The purchase also has helped fuel spending. After buying a“fixer-upper,” the couple poured more than $100,000 intoconstruction, repairing termite damage and installing new airconditioning, electrical fixtures, roofing and siding. Next year,they plan to expand with a new master-suite bedroom and bath thatcould cost another $70,000.

Rising values of neighboring homes make them confident they aremaking a worthwhile investment.

“It was a little bit risky” to buy at the time, Doherty said.“The market has turned in our favor.”

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