House value changes by State (foreclosure, 5%, sales, housing)

[KCfromNC]

First American just released their most recent update of their house price index : http://www.loanperformance.com/press...8v1_012609.pdf

This is similar to the Case-Shiller index, in that it uses data from repeat sales to try to figure out what is going on with house prices. This avoids the problem of using average price where the mix of houses changes, so it should be a better (not perfect) measure of where values are going.

The report indicates that this was a bad year, and got worse the further into the year we went. Some highlights :

National housing prices fell 10.6 percent for the full year 2008: the largest decline in more than 30 years.

U.S. home prices peaked in 2006, since then they have declined 18.5 percent on a cumulative basis and are currently back to Spring 2004 levels.

The company also reports that in 2008 the number of total unique foreclosure filings increased to 3.4 million, up 76 percent from 1.9 million in 2007 and more than triple the 1.1 million filings in 2006.

They also provide state by state price changes. Adding up the states by population :

24% of people live in states where prices have dropped 10% or more.
51% live in states where prices dropped 5% or more
82% live in states where nominal prices dropped over the past year
Adding in the two states which had positive nominal gains but negative real gains, 85% of people live in states where houses are worth less than last year.

31 of the 34 largest metro areas saw values go down.

TX and smaller towns in upstate NY are featured prominently as places where prices went up.

Check out the PDF for a map showing price declines by state. It's interesting to see how widespread the problem really is.

[Bill Keegan]

Originally Posted by KCfromNC

First American just released their most recent update of their house price index : http://www.loanperformance.com/press...8v1_012609.pdf

This is similar to the Case-Shiller index, in that it uses data from repeat sales to try to figure out what is going on with house prices. This avoids the problem of using average price where the mix of houses changes, so it should be a better (not perfect) measure of where values are going.

The report indicates that this was a bad year, and got worse the further into the year we went. Some highlights :

I'm a little confused by the numbers right up front of this report. The first few bullet points include these;
National housing prices fell 10.6 percent for the full year 2008: the largest decline in more than 30 years.
During 2008, home prices nationally declined between 10 and 11 percent every month except January.

How is it possible for prices to fall at least 10% for 11 out of 12 months, and end up falling a total of only 10.6%?
If I do my math correctly, (and I guess it's possible I didn't, as I am doing this in a hurry before I run out to see some houses) January (which was the only month that DIDN'T see a drop of at least 10%, according to the report) would have had to see an increase of something near 180% in order for this to be accurate. And we all know that didn't happen

So what am I missing

[bigtrees]

Originally Posted by Bill Keegan

How is it possible for prices to fall at least 10% for 11 out of 12 months, and end up falling a total of only 10.6%?
If I do my math correctly, (and I guess it's possible I didn't, as I am doing this in a hurry before I run out to see some houses) January (which was the only month that DIDN'T see a drop of at least 10%, according to the report) would have had to see an increase of something near 180% in order for this to be accurate. And we all know that didn't happen

So what am I missing

The price comparisons are year over year, not month to month.

It would be better to say that in 11 out of 12 months prices were 10% less than the same month one year prior.

It's an accurate way of comparison because it gets rid of the problem about seasonal trends in housing but makes articles hard to read.

[killer2021]

I am surprised NY didn't see any loses.

[mathjak107]

the numbers are so general that they are really useless for much except knowing which state may be down overall.... real estate is much more local then that

[PotterGeek]

Am I reading this right? One-half of 1 percent for GA? Surely not.