Case-Shiller: Seasonal Slide in Home Prices Continues
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. – October data is released in December).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Portland/Vancouver area* as of October:
Month to Month: Down 0.5%
Year to Year: Down 4.7%
Prices at this level in: December 2004
Peak month: July 2007
Change from Peak: Down 27.4% in 51 months
Low Tier: Under $197,431
Mid Tier: $197,431 to $294,806
Hi Tier: Over $294,806
Nineteen of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between September and October (vs. eighteen from August to September): Only Phoenix saw an increase. Wait, Phoenix? Yup, Phoenix. Atlanta fell the most in October (again), falling a whopping 5.0% in a single month.
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 of Portland’s tiers fell in October, with the low tier taking the biggest hit. Month to month, the low tier was down 1.7%, the middle tier fell 0.1, and the high tier decreased 0.4%.
In this next chart, I’ve visualized the month to month trends of all twenty Case-Shiller-tracked cities. Green and above the horizontal axis if they were increasing in the month charted, red and below the axis if they were decreasing. I’ve excluded 2000 through 2004 since they looked largely the same as 2005 (mostly green).
Just four months ago, all twenty cities saw month to month gains. Now just one is not the red.
