Case-Shiller: Seattle Home Price Drops Not Done Yet
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. – February data is released in April).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Seattle area* as of February:
February 2009
Month to Month: Down 1.5%
Year to Year: Down 15.4%
Change from Peak: Down 20.9% in 19 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 (June 2005).
The magnitude of February’s drop was roughly equal to the gain that was seen between June and July 2005, when the housing bubble was in full force here in Seattle. It is also worth noting that the rate of month-to-month decline definitely softened from the last few months. It will be interesting to see if Seattle’s HPI actually posts a small gain this spring, as it did last year.
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.
Of the 20 cities tracked by Case-Shiller, only Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta had fallen further from their respective peaks than Seattle at the 19-month mark. The relative rapidity of Seattle’s decline is likely due to the fact that we were “late to the party” with respect to the bursting of the housing bubble. In effect, we have more ground to cover in a shorter amount of time in order to “catch up” to what’s happening in the rest of the country.
*[Case-Shiller defines Seattle as the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties.]
