Case-Shiller: Boston Home Prices See Record Drop in November

I apologize again for the multi-week radio silence here. We’ve revamped our data delivery to be able to better streamline the whole process, and from now on there will be a regular schedule of in-depth data in this space. For now though, it’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI).

For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – November data is released in January).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Boston area* as of November:

November 2008
Month to Month: Down 2.6%
Year to Year: Down 7.4%
Change from Peak: Down 15.0% in 38 months

The following chart shows the Boston HPI scaled such that the September 2005 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Boston HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (August 2003).

Boston’s Case-Shiller HPI continues to decline heading into the winter, as we predicted it would back in December’s post. November’s 2.6% month-to-month drop was Boston’s largest yet, exceeding November 2006’s MOM drop by nearly a full percentage point. Could Boston’s period of slower-than-average decline finally be over?

Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare Boston’s performance to other areas across the country:

And here’s one more chart, in which I have lined up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.

Although it has been declining longer than every other Case-Shiller-tracked market, total price declines in Boston have been relatively moderate to date. November’s steep drop stands out as an unusually extreme move in what has otherwise been a surprisingly orderly unwinding here.

It will be interesting to see if this marks the start of a new trend or a just one-month aberration.

*[Case-Shiller defines Boston as the entire Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all or part of the following counties: Essex MA, Middlesex MA, Norfolk MA, Plymouth MA, Suffolk MA, Rockingham NH, and Strafford NH.]