Case-Shiller: Seattle Home Prices Drop 15% In One Year
On Monday April 27th at 1:00pm, Robert Shiller (the Shiller in Case-Shiller) will be giving a lecture at Seattle Pacific University. The event is free and open to the public. More information on the SPU website.
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. – January data is released in March).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Seattle area* as of January:
January 2009
Month to Month: Down 3.6%
Year to Year: Down 15.0%
Change from Peak: Down 19.7% in 18 months
The following chart shows the Seattle HPI scaled such that the July 2007 peak is 100% on the y-axis. Data on the x-axis is scaled to display the last time (pre-peak) the Seattle HPI was at or lower than it was in the latest data (September 2005).
According to the Case-Shiller index, as of January home prices in Seattle have “rewound” three and a half years.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves, so you can compare Seattle’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.
Price drops off the peak here in Seattle continue to turn in numbers lower than everywhere other than Los Angeles (in Redfin’s 7-city sample). For some perspective, home prices in Seattle have fallen more in 18 months than they have in 40 months in Boston.
*[Case-Shiller defines Seattle as the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties.]
