Happy Case-Shiller day, everybody. Yes, it’s time once again for us to take a look at the latest data from the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. According to December data, Seattle home prices were:
Down 2.0% November to December.
Down 6.0% YOY.
Down 27.9% from the July 2007 peak
Last year prices fell 0.7% from November to December and year-over-year prices were down 7.9%.
December’s data marked yet another new post-peak low point for Seattle home prices, which have now fallen back to levels last seen in late 2004. Prices are down 5.7% since July (the first post-tax credit month), and down 7.2% since their late-2009 tax credit mini-peak.
Here’s an interactive graph of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities, courtesy of Tableau Software (check and un-check the boxes on the right):
Two more of the holdouts dropped back into YOY negative territory in December: Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now only two cities are still above where they were this time last year: San Diego and Washington DC.
In December, thirteen of the twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities experienced smaller year-over-year drops (or saw year-over-year increases) than Seattle (one less than November):
- Washington, DC at +4.1%
- San Diego at +1.7%
- Los Angeles at -0.2%
- San Francisco at -0.4%
- Boston at -0.8%
- New York at -2.3%
- Denver at -2.4%
- Dallas at -3.6%
- Miami at -3.7%
- Cleveland at -4.0%
- Charlotte at -4.4%
- Las Vegas at -4.7%
- Minneapolis at -5.3%
Falling faster than Seattle as of December: Tampa, Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Detroit.
Hit the jump for the rest of our monthly Case-Shiller charts, including the interactive chart of the raw Case-Shiller HPIs.
Here’s the interactive chart of the raw HPI for all twenty cities through November.
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 forty-one months since the price peak in Seattle prices have declined 27.9%, another new high.
With prices breaking backward into 2004 for the first time, I thought it might be a good time to bring back the “rewind” chart:
The blue line on August 2005 represents the month that this site launched. As of December 2010, there have effectively been zero price gains for six full years.
For posterity, here’s our offset graph—the same graph we post every month—with L.A. & San Diego time-shifted from Seattle & Portland by 17 months. All four cities fell yet again in December. Year-over-year, Portland came in at -7.8%, Los Angeles at -0.2%, and San Diego at +1.7%.
I think this graph is still worth posting if only to display how the government’s massive intervention in the market screwed with the natural flow, causing all the markets to rise simultaneously, and once the artificial support was removed, to come crashing back down to reality simultaneously.
Note: This graph is not intended to be predictive. It is for entertainment purposes only.
Check back tomorrow for a post on the Case-Shiller data for Seattle’s price tiers.
(Home Price Indices, Standard & Poor’s, 02.22.2011)