Plotting the April Case/Shiller Housing Numbers

Chalk it up to seasonal factors, but it's good to see some green in the month over month readings of the S&P/Case-Shiller Housing indices.  As shown at right, 8 of the 20 cities that Case-Shiller track showed increases in home prices from March to April.  Cleveland saw the biggest month over month increase at 2.94%, followed by Dallas (1.12%), Denver (0.83%), and Seattle (0.72%). 

There were plenty of declines in April as well, however.  Miami fell another 4% in just one month, while Las Vegas, Tampa, Minneapolis, LA, San Fran, San Diego and Phoenix all fell by more than 2%. 

And the year over year numbers are still quite depressing.  The Composite 10-City index was down 16.3% from April 2007 to April 2008.  And Charlotte, which was the last city to hang onto year over year price gains, finally turned negative versus a year ago.

Below we highlight historical charts of the monthly year over year percent change in median home prices for the 20 cities tracked by S&P/Case-Shiller.  If you look real closely, you'll see that in April the year over year declines stopped declining by as much as they have been recently.

click to enlarge

Comments

[jackh]

With the exception of the "mistake on the lake" (Cleveland) the charts seem to still be falling. So, we can assume housing and the American household net worth is still on the skids???

[HARM]

Want to know where housing prices are likely to go between now and (at least) 2013? These two charts ought to help clarify things:

www.housingwire.com/wp...
www.financialsense.com...

Biggest. Housing Bubble. Ever.
(game over)

[thannagan]

jackh - They said to "look real closely" - so, look real real real closely! Cleveland is not the only one to flatten or tick up.

[dapperdan19]

I've been charting both the Case-Shiller and OFHEO indexes for the Seattle area. The OFHEO index (conforming Fannie and Freddie paper) is definitely further along in it's correction process. If you plot versus a 4.50% growth trend going back to January '91, the OFHEO index is just about back to that trendline. Case-Shiller is still over 20% above that trendline. The Jumbo market still has a ways to correct. It going to be a tough 12 months for the McMansions. On the other hand, not so bad for the FTHB type properties.

One issue we're going to have moving forward is that DU 7.0 has really tightened some of the underwriting standards for conforming loans. Fannie Mae has gotten really really tight. I look at the mix of loans that I'm doing now versus last year and it's a total transformation from all Fannie/Freddie product to right now I've got a mix of 100% government loans (FHA, VA, USDA). Every single loan I'm doing right now is government.

Believe it or not, I'm doing FHA loans for people with excellent credit. 764 midscore type of paper going to FHA because Fannie/Freddie, with the LTV cutback in declining markets, is effectively only going to 85% LTV/CLTV in markets deemed "declining markets".

For those lamenting/moralizing about credit worthiness, all I can say is that the credit quality going through and getting approved for the past 9 months is the best credit quality I've ever seen in my lifetime. Anyone doing loans right now will tell you the same thing. It's much tougher to get an approval, but the benefit is that overall credit quality is extremely high right now.