The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller National Home Price index shows that home prices fell at a record level, 19.1 percent to be exact, in Q1. This is the biggest drop in the index’s 21-year history, and the worst part is that there are no signs of it bottoming anytime soon.
To date, home prices have fallen 32.2 percent since the peak in 2006 and prices on average are back to 2002 levels. At this rate, another asset will have a lost decade of growth.
The hardest hit cities are Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco, which all showed a decline of more than 30 percent from a year-ago levels. Yikes!
It’s not all bad though. Three cities, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Denver which almost didn’t participate in the housing bubble, show a slight increase in prices over February.
I guess what goes around comes around. The bigger the rise, the bigger the fall.