Home Prices

Today, the much awaited S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas was reported. Today’s report showed that this index declined 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, after falling 0.7 percent in November.

The 20-city index fell to it’s lowest level since January 2003.

Prices in the 20 cities dropped 4.0 percent year over year, topping expectations for a drop of 3.6 percent.

Here in sunny San Diego, the average home price drop 5.4% in 2011 according to the Case Shiller figures.

Case Shiller only showed one city in the United States to have any increase in home prices in 2011. That city was Detroit with a tiny half of 1% increase year-over-year. One should keep in mind that Detroit is pretty much a basket case as far as home prices and the economy goes. Things have been so bad there that there has been persistent talk of demolishing residential and commercial real estate and returning the land back to agriculture uses.

In another recent report released by  DataQuick, (a La Jolla California real estate tracking company), showed that the median paid for houses and condominiums was $260,000 in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties, down 3.7 percent from $270,000 in December and January 2011, and the lowest since May 2009!

In light of these dismal reports you just have to ask yourself where is the economic recovery we keep hearing about? Is all the recovery talk, just that … talk? Or, perhaps it’ll just take a while longer for the anemic recovery to show any effect in the housing markets.

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