By Rex Nutting
From MarketWatch
U.S. home prices continued to fall in January, with prices in 10 major cities now down 0.7% year-over-year, according to Standard & Poor's and MacroMarkets LLC, which released the January Case-Shiller price indexes on Tuesday.
The 10-city index is down 0.7% in the past year, the first year-over-year negative reading since 1996. The 20-city index is down 0.2% year-over-year. A year ago, prices were rising 15%.
"The annual declines in the composites are a good indicator of the dire state of the U.S. residential real estate market," said Robert J. Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets, in a statement. Read the full report.
Related Link
New-Home Sales Tumble To 7-Year Low in February
http://www.realestatejournal.com/buysell/markettrends/20070326-bater.html
"We look for price declines in the bubble regions but flat prices nationally," wrote Michelle Meyer, an economist for Lehman Bros. Goldman Sachs economists said they expect prices to fall 5% in 2007 compared with 2006.
The report comes amid heightened concerns about the housing market. Inventories of unsold homes continued to build up in February, recent data have said. See full story. And at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, lawmakers pointed fingers at federal bank regulators for letting lending standards get too loose, putting many people with less-than-stellar credit at risk of losing their homes. See full story.
Falling home prices will exacerbate credit problems, because many borrowers will not be able to refinance their loan or sell their house because they owe more than it's worth.
The 10-city Case-Shiller index turned negative in mid-1990 and remained negative for much of the next three years. Prices did not return to the peak seen in October 1989 until January 1998.
Home prices fell from December to January in 17 of the 20 cities; only Miami showed any price gains. Prices were flat in Charlotte, N.C., and Seattle. Prices were falling fastest in January in San Diego, down 1.7%, or a 22.4% annual rate. Prices dropped 1.1% in Los Angeles, or a 14% annual rate.
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The 10-city index was down 0.8% in January, or an annual rate of 10%. The expanded 20-city index was down 0.7% in January, or an 8.7% annual rate.
Eleven of the 20 cities had negative price appreciation in the past year, led by Detroit (down 6.9%) and Boston (down 5.6%). The biggest increases were in Seattle (up 11.1%) and Portland, Ore. (up 8.7%).
Prices have now retreated year-over-year in some of the regions that had the biggest price gains in 2004 and 2005. Phoenix is down 0.7% year-over-year. San Francisco is down 1.4%. Washington is down 3.9%.
The Case-Shiller index is considered to be a superior gauge of home prices compared with the median sales-price data released by the Commerce Department or National Association of Realtors, because it tracks multiple sales on the same property and is therefore not influenced by a different mix of homes sold in a period.
In a separate report, the Conference Board said its consumer confidence index fell to 107.2 from 111.2, the first decline in five months. See full story.
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-- March 28, 2007