March 29, 2011 (Chris Moore)
Home prices declined for the sixth month in a row according to the Standard & Poor/Case-Shiller 20-city index. The report shows that home prices declined in 19 of the 20 cities surveyed with 11 of them at the lowest level since the housing bust in 2007. It’s time to call it what it is, a double-dip housing recession.
Home values in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Detroit, and Cleveland are now below January 2000 levels and with the backlog of homes in foreclosure, one can only expect things to get worse before they get better.
“The housing market recession is not yet over, and none of the statistics are indicating any form of sustained recovery,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s.
The only market that showed an increase in housing prices was Washington D.C. Home prices there increased by 0.1 percent month over month. Year over year, home prices in the nation’s capital are up 3.6 percent, with prices rising nearly 11 percent since bottoming out in March of 2009. No doubt thanks to the hundreds of new agencies and thousands of new jobs created in the last two years.
The 10-City Composite was down 2.0 percent and the 20-City Composite fell 3.1 percent from their January 2010 levels. On a monthly basis, the 10-City Composite was down 0.9 percent and the 20-City Composite fell 1.0 percent in January versus December 2010.
“Keeping with the trends set in late 2010, January brings us weakening home prices with no real hope in sight for the near future,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s. “With this month’s data, we find the same 11 MSAs posting new recent index lows. The 10-City and 20-City Composites continue to decline month-over-month and have posted monthly declines for six consecutive months now.
As of January 2011, average home prices across the United States are back to the levels where they were in the summer of 2003. Measured from their peaks in June/July 2006 through January 2011, the peak-to-current decline for the 10-City Composite and 20-City Composite is -31.7 percent and -31.8 percent respectively. The improvements from their April 2009 trough are +2.8 percent and +1.1 percent, respectively.
The eleven cities that achieved new price lows were Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Portland (OR), Seattle and Tampa. These same 11 cities had posted lows with December’s report, as well.
Tags: Standard & Poor, Case-Shiller, home prices, housing bust, double dip, foreclosures, housing recession, weakening prices
