Case-Shiller: Prices Mostly Flat as Tax Credit Neared Expiration

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). Keep in mind that all of the charts in this series of posts are based on the seasonally-adjusted data provided by S&P. For the full source data behind this post, plus non-seasonally adjusted data, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website (requires free registration). 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. – October data is released in December).

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

Eleven of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw an increase in their respective seasonally-adjusted HPIs between September and October (the same number as September). Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Boston, Las Vegas, Cleveland, Miami, Chicago, and Tampa all marked seasonally-adjusted drops month-to-month.

Here’s a look at Boston’s latest tiered data, back through 2000:

The low tier got a serious boost in October, shooting up over 1% in just a single month. The middle tier dropped just slightly, while the high tier fell 0.3%.

Here’s a look at the seasonally-adjusted month-to-month figures in Redfin’s markets (welcome Atlanta!), with annotations of the beginning and the original end of the homebuyer tax credit, so you can see that I’m not just making stuff up when I say that the effect of the tax credit on home prices appears to be waning.

Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves:

Here’s our peak decline chart, in which we line 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.

Here’s the flip side of the peak decline chart—a graph of just this year, indexed to January = 100%:

The excellent economics news site Calculated Risk posted a great roundup on Sunday of 2009′s various government programs intended to prop up home prices, and when each is currently allegedly going to end. With the housing credit expiring next spring, mortgage-backed securities (MBS) purchases ending in the first quarter, and tighter lending standards from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) on the way, home prices still may be poised to fall a bit further before all is said and done.

*[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.]