US Home Prices Continue to Fall

The Case-Shiller Home Price Index released yesterday showed new records in year over year declines. for the month of August. The 10 city composite index showed a -17.5% year over year decline while the 20 city composite showed a -16.3% fall. From their peaks the 10 city composite is off -21.1% whilst the 20 city composite is off -19.5% from the peak. Of the 20 cities surveyed, 14 recorded declines in July. David Blitzer of S&P had this to say:

“There are signs of a slow down in the rate of decline across the metro areas, but no evidence of a bottom” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s. “Little positive news can be found when cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix report annual declines as large as -29.9% and -29.3%, respectively, and all 20 cities are still in negative territory on a year-over-year basis. The Sunbelt continues to be the story, with the seven cities that basically represent that area reporting annual declines roughly between 20 and 30%. While some cities did show some marginal improvement over last month’s data, there is still very little evidence of any particular region experiencing an absolute turnaround.”

So the bottom callers will have to wait for another month, however I think they actually see a bottom until well into next year.