We could see continued home price deterioration well into spring 2012 — and maybe a lot longer than that. Analysts can talk about low interest rates, improved job growth, and declining inventory all they want, but national trends won’t be reversed until the most fundamental issue — supply and demand — is clearly behind us.
Demand still needs to pick up dramatically in some markets, and, even with a decline in listed inventory, many markets have an unusually high percentage of properties listed for sale and face the prospect of shadow inventory coming onto the market for years at rates higher than in the past.
The S&P/Case-Shiller indices are actually 3-month composites, published with a considerable lag. So today’s release was for November, and included data from September and October. The headline numbers are not seasonally adjusted (prices tend to fall along with sales this time of year, but the seasonal trends do not account for all of the decline announced today).
From the press release Home Prices Continued to Decline in November 2011 According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices:
Data through November 2011, released today by S&P Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, showed declines of 1.3`% for both the 10- and 20-City Composites in November over October. For a second consecutive month, 19 of the 20 cities covered by the indices also saw home prices decrease. The 10- and 20-City Composites posted annual returns of -3.6% and -3.7% versus November 2010, respectively. These are worse than the -3.2% and -3.4% respective rates reported for October. In addition to both Composites, 13 of the 20 MSAs saw their annual returns decrease compared to October’s data. New York and Tampa saw no change in annual returns in November; while Charlotte, Cleveland, Denver, Minneapolis and Phoenix saw their annual rates improve. At -11.8% Atlanta continued to post the lowest annual return. Detroit and Washington DC were the only two cities to post positive annual returns of +3.8% and +0.5%, respectively, in November. While positive, both cities saw these annual rates fall versus October’s data.
Here’s what that looks like:
Note that with the seasonal adjustment, the data for individual cities is still bad, but a bit better than the data that has not been seasonally adjusted:
Here’s an interesting graph about how the bust has played out differently in the cities that comprise the Case-Shiller 20-city composite from Calculated Risk:
