Pace of US Housing Price Declines Continues to Slow

It says something about the parlous state of the US housing industry when an annual decline of 17.7 % in home prices can be viewed as good news. But the fact that the August decline in the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller 10-City Composite Index was only slightly worse than the 17.5% recorded in July indicates that at least the rate of decline continues to slow. The 20-city Composite showed a 16.6% annual decline, compared with 16.3% in July.

For the fifth straight month, every region reported negative annual returns. Both the 10-City and 20-City Composites have been in year-over-year decline for 20 consecutive months. Of the 20 regions, 13 of them had their annual returns worsen from last month’s report. As seen throughout 2008, the Sun Belt markets are being hit the most. Phoenix and Las Vegas are both reporting annual declines in excess of 30%, and Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego are all in excess of 25%.

Nine of the 20 regions have record annual declines. Phoenix and Las Vegas are now returning -30.7% and -30.6% versus August 2007, respectively. Each of the California markets- Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego- are down more than 25% from their values 12 months ago. Miami and Tampa, the two Florida markets, are down 28.1% and 18.1%, respectively.

For the August/July period only 2 regions, Cleveland and Boston, had positive returns. Cleveland returned +1.1% and Boston returned +0.1%. Boston has had positive monthly returns for each of the past five months. Dallas and Denver’s streaks of 4+ straight positive returning months ended in August. San Francisco was the biggest decliner for the month returning -3.5%. This worsened from its July/June return of -1.8%. From August 2007 to August 2008, Dallas and Charlotte have the best relative performance. Dallas is down 2.7% over the year and Charlotte is down 2.8%.

Comments

[thedozer:]

% is not quantitative. It looks good, but no meat without relation to prices behind the %change.

Avg. income +-53k
avg. mortgage +325k

math doesn't work without Greenspan's plastic money.... I present to you Team Bernanke

2008 Oct 28 06:04 PM

[fatcat:]

Charlotte will fall 20% in the next 6 months due to BAC an WAC down shrink...

2008 Oct 28 10:44 PM

[bearfund:]

Housing prices in gold terms hardly fell at all. And remain well above historical trading ranges. Housing in income terms is likewise ridiculously expensive. Either the dollar or housing needs to lose at least 50-60% of its value before this cycle reaches its low.

2008 Oct 28 11:41 PM