Free Fallin’
Home prices in a fell by a whopping 20% in January from the previous year – the sharpest decline in history and yet another sign that the air is still coming out of the recently-burst housing bubble.
Phoenix led the way with a 35% drop and Las Vegas was close behind at 32.5%.
From the previous month, prices were down 2.8%, following a 2.6% drop in November.
From Bloomberg:
The S&P/Case-Shiller index’s decrease was more than forecast and compares with an 18.6 percent decrease in December. The gauge has fallen every month since January 2007, and year- over-year records began in 2001.
A glut of unsold properties may keep prices low, shrinking household wealth and damping spending. Still, sales of new and previously owned homes rose in February, indicating the housing slump, now in its fourth year, may ease as policy efforts to unclog credit and aid borrowers begin to take hold.
“There is still a lot of downward momentum,” said Michelle Meyer, an economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York. “We don’t think we’ll see a bottom in home prices until the second half of next year. The decline in home prices will continue to depress household balance sheets.”
We await the word from the Franklin Jones Real Team as to what the impact is here in South Carolina, but nationally the picture is obviously pretty bleak.
Alongside the plummeting home values, foreclosures are up nearly 30% from February a year ago, compared to a 17.8% increase in January.
Comments
By Recovering Lobbyist on April 1st, 2009 at 8:47 am
Will, it is real easy to look at national numbers and paint a picture that the entire country is in the tank. It is not. There is no such thing as a national real estate market and if you dig into the article you read you would find out that South Carolina is in fair shape. None of the three major markets in our state are down more than a fraction of a point from their highs. Greenville is projected to already be on the rise, and Columbia and Charleston are projected to start recovering by the third quarter of this year. Take a look at these links:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/20/real_estate/home_price_forecast.moneymag/index.htm
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_realestate/2009/states.html#S
One other thing: at least Money looks at 100 markets. Some of the reports that I have seen measure only the top 20 markets. Most of these markets are in California and Florida. I know you are “unfair and imbalanced,” but don’t be a part of the sky is falling crowd. It may be falling in Florida and California, but it is not falling in South Carolina.