On Monday April 27th at 1:00pm, Robert Shiller (the Shiller in Case-Shiller) will be giving a lecture at Seattle Pacific University. The event is free and open to the public. More information on the SPU website. For those unable to attend, I will be taking notes and will most likely make a post about the event later that evening.
Let’s make our regularly scheduled monthly check on the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. According to January data,
Down 3.6% December to January.
Down 15.0% YOY.
Down 19.7% from the July 2007 peak
Last year prices fell 1.8% from December to January and year-over-year prices were down 1.25%.
Here’s the usual graph, with L.A. & San Diego offset from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. Portland turned in a smaller YOY loss than Seattle for the second month in a row. The YOY decline in Los Angeles continued the upward trend that began with November’s data, while San Diego turned back down slightly.
Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.
Here’s the graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities:
In January, eight of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops than Seattle (the same number as December). Dallas at -4.9%, Denver at -5.2%, Cleveland at -5.2%, Boston at -7.3%, Charlotte at -8.2%, New York at -9.6%, Atlanta at -13.9%, and Portland at -14.0%. Phoenix had the largest year-over-year drop yet again, with prices falling 35% in a single year.
Here’s an update to the peak-decline graph, inspired by a graph created by reader CrystalBall. This chart takes the twelve cities whose peak index was greater than 175, and tracks how far they have fallen so far from their peak. The horizontal axis shows the total number of months since each individual city peaked.
In the eighteen months since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined just shy of 20%. The Seattle’s price decline continued to come in slightly worse than Phoenix and Tampa were this far from their respective peaks, but slightly better than Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Miami.
Here’s the “rewind” chart. The horizontal range is selected to go back just far enough to find the last time that Seattle’s HPI was as low as it is now. This gives us a clean visual of just how far back prices have retreated in terms of months.
Seattle’s Case-Shiller value for January 2009 of 154.37 came in just above its July 2005 value of 154.11. Prices have now “rewound” three and a half years.
Coverage elsewhere:
Seattle Times: Report: Home prices slip in Seattle, but plunge in other parts of U.S.
Seattle P-I: Seattle-area prices back to July 2005 levels
Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.
(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 03.31.2009)