Let’s make our regularly scheduled monthly check on the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. According to March data,
Down 2.0% February to March.
Down 16.4% YOY.
Down 22.5% from the July 2007 peak
Last year prices fell 0.9% from February to March and year-over-year prices were down 4.4%.
Here’s the usual graph, with L.A. & San Diego offset from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. Portland extended its streak to three months of turning in a smaller YOY loss than Seattle. The YOY declines in Los Angeles and San Diego both continued the upward trends that began with November’s data.
Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.
Despite the above disclaimer, I can’t help but continue to find it interesting how closely Portland and Seattle are continuing to follow the path of Los Angeles and especially San Diego on the way down. If the trend continues (a big if), it looks like there’s a good chance Seattle’s YOY trend may reverse course sometime around March of next year.
Here’s the graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities:
In February, eight of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops than Seattle (the same number as the previous three months). Denver at -5.6%, Dallas at -5.6%, Boston at -8.0%, Cleveland at -9.0%, Charlotte at -9.3%, New York at -11.8%, Portland at -15.3%, and Atlanta at -15.8%. As usual, Phoenix had the largest year-over-year drop, with prices falling 36% in a single year, forcing me to adjust the y-axis in the above chart.
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 twenty months since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined 22.5%. Seattle’s price decline this far from the peak improved slightly from the trendlines of Phoenix and Tampa. Speaking of Phoenix, prices have now fallen over 50% both there and in Las Vegas.
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 March 2009 of 149.03 came in just above its May 2005 value of 148.97. Prices are presently “rewinding” at about the same monthly rate they increased during early 2005.
Here’s an added bonus that I posted last month in the comments. The following chart takes the post-bubble years of 2007, 2008, and 2009 and indexes each January’s Case-Shiller HPI to 100 so we can get a picture of how this year’s declines compare to last year:
So far prices are falling slightly faster than they did in 2008. If the trend follows last year, we can expect to see a slight uptick in next month’s numbers.
Lastly, here’s the month-to-month trend for Seattle that I posted this morning, with all March values highlighted:
Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.
(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 05.26.2009)