Case-Shiller: San Diego Home Price Drops Slow Ever So Slightly

It’s time once again 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. – December data is released in February).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for San Diego County as of December:

December 2008
Month to Month: Down 2.1%
Year to Year: Down 24.8%
Change from Peak: Down 39.2% in 37 months

Last month I questioned whether a slight slowdown in the rate of year-to-year price drops may be the first sign that home prices are on their way to stabilizing in San Diego. Of course, a single month of data is not enough to come to any real conclusions, but it was interesting, nonetheless.

This month, the year-to-year data in San Diego and Los Angeles ticked up again. Here’s a chart to demonstrate what I’m talking about:

Now, I’m not saying that two months of data is enough to proclaim the imminent demise of the housing bust, but it does at least show us that November’s data was not merely a one-month anomaly. This is definitely something we will be keeping our eyes on in the coming months.

The following chart shows the San Diego HPI scaled such that the November 2005 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the San Diego HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (October 2002).

According to the Case-Shiller index, as of December home prices in San Diego have “rewound” over six years.

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

And here’s our final 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.

San Diego has experienced one of the longest and deepest home price busts of any of the cities tracked by Case-Shiller, so it would make sense for San Diego to be one of the first to find the actual bottom. I still thing we’ve got a ways to go yet, but if the pattern of moderating year-to-year declines continues, we may at least know where to look.