Home Prices see record fall in S&P/Case-Shiller Index. | CountingPips Forex & Currency Trading Blog

June 24, 2008 - Forex Economic News

Home Prices see record fall in S&P/Case-Shiller Index.

Home prices in the U.S. continue to decline as the Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller index released today showed that home prices fell a record amount in April when compared to a year ago. The S & P’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index measures sale prices of existing single-family homes nationally and tracks 10-city and 20-city composite home price measurements. The April house prices report showed that the 20-city composite index fell an annual 15.3 percent in April to mark a new record low while the 10-city composite index also fell a new record low 16.3 percent in April when compared to last year.

April also marked the first time in the past year that all 20 metropolitan areas tracked have shown a decline in home prices. Charlotte had been the lone market area with increasing home prices until April when prices showed a 0.1 percent decline. The areas hardest hit continued to be Las Vegas and Miami with declines of 26.8 percent and 26.7 percent, respectively. A positive aspect of the report was that 8 of the 20 areas, despite annual negative returns, had increases in homeprices in the March to April timeframe. David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S & P, commented in the report, "All 20 MSAs are now showing declines with Charlotte, the last holdout during the 2007/early 2008 period, now reporting an annual decline of 0.1%. One possible bright side to the annual figures is that three MSAs – Chicago, Cleveland and Denver – while still negative, showed some imprannual figures over those reported last month."

Tags: sp/case-shiller, house prices, home prices, real estate, usd

Blog Home