Home Prices Plunge 18.5%; Another New Low
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 8:31
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index reports that the price of single family homes dropped 18.5% in December versus the same time the previous year.
The declines are accelerating. The Case-Shiller index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 2.5 percent in the month of December alone, compared with a 2.3 percent decline in the previous period.
Since the 2005 real estate peak, home prices have fallen almost 27% nationally. All 20 metro areas are reporting negative monthly and annual rates of change in average home prices. Minneapolis, Las Vegas and Phoenix all reported monthly declines in excess of 4.5% in December.
The seven worst performing cities in terms of year-over-year declines continue to be from the Sunbelt, reporting negative returns in excess of 20%. Phoenix was down 34.0%, Las Vegas reported -33.0% and San Francisco fell 31.2%. Denver, Dallas, Cleveland and Boston faired the best in terms of annual declines down 4.0%, 4.3%, 6.1% and 7.0%, respectively.
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Phil Anderson says:
February 25th, 2009 at 1:11 am
The US exhibits a very clear 18-year real estate cycle, measurable since 1800 when the Federal government first began to sell it off. The current downturn will last around 4 years, as have all the others, (1991, 1974 to mention the previous two) and the low for this cycle can be expected in 2010.