February housing price numbers are in today from Case Shiller (pdf). The good news is for the first time in over a year, we did not set a new record for year over year decline - "only" coming in at 18.6% down for the 20 city index. That's not as bad as the 19% record decline set for January - but obviously still very bad. Unfortunately, one month does not make a trend, so we will have to see results from March and April to see if we are getting closer to a nationwide bottom. The pace of sales (due to REO sales) has increased significantly during the first quarter, so maybe we are seeing the positive effects of that.
Once again, Phoenix led the way in home price declines, with a 35.2% decrease year over year. Las Vegas was second at 31.7%. From its peak in June of 2006, Phoenix is now down 50.8%. That's a pretty stunning number when you consider we haven't hit bottom yet.
Full text of the February Case Shiller press release with charts and graphs can be found here(pdf).
Comments