Case-Shiller: Los Angeles Home Prices Fall Back Into YOY Losses
It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.
For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index 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. – December data is released in February).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Los Angeles area (which Case-Shiller defines as LA and Orange Counties) as of December:
Month to Month: Down 1.3%
Year to Year: Down 0.2%
Prices at this level in: October 2003
Peak month: September 2006
Change from Peak: Down 37.6% in 51 months
Low Tier: Under $309,109
Mid Tier: $309,109 to $506,475
Hi Tier: Over $506,475
Ninteen of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between November and December (the same as October to November). Washington DC’s 0.4% increase was the only month-to-month gain. In November there were four markets posting year-over-year gains. In December that number dropped to two: San Diego and Washington DC.
Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:
And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:
All three tiers lost a fairly large amount of ground in December. Month to month, the low tier was down 1.3%, the middle tier fell 1.0%, and the high tier decreased 1.4%.
