20-city price index plummets 18.6%
Real estate brief
By Inman News, Tuesday, April 28, 2009.A monthly home-price index recorded unprecedented year-over-year drops in the price of resale single-family homes in February 2009 compared to the same month a year earlier in 10 of 20 market areas, with 15 markets showing double-digit percentage declines.
The composite index for the 20 metro areas, down 18.6 percent year-over-year in February, did not set a new record -- breaking a string of 16 record-setting months.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-metro area price index, which compares repeat sales over time for thousands of U.S. homes, found a 35.2 percent year-over-year decline in the Phoenix, Ariz., market in February -- the steepest index drop among the 20 tracked areas.
Next on the list was Las Vegas (-31.7 percent), San Francisco (-31 percent), and Miami, (-29.5 percent).
The slightest year-over-year index declines were in Dallas (-4.5 percent), Denver (-5.7 percent), and Boston (-7.2 percent).
The largest price drop from January 2009 to February 2009 was in Cleveland (-5 percent), and the slightest drop was in Dallas (-0.3 percent).
The Case-Shiller price index has come under fire from critics -- some within and some outside the real estate industry -- who question whether the selected metro areas and the index data paint a clear picture of price changes across the U.S.
And where home-price charts are concerned there is often disagreement over their accuracy and questions about their methodology -- the Wall Street Journal last week reported on a challenge by economist Thomas Lawler over Yale University economist Robert Shiller's use of a chart showing U.S. home price trends since 1890.
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Submitted by John Rakoci on May 3, 2009 - 6:14am.
The more the media promotes the hype the more fear put into the public. My neighborhood has been going UP throughout the downturn. Good news does not sell so that will not be in the news.