Follow Me on Twitter

US home prices increase 3.1 percent in 3rd quarter; down 8.9 percent from a year ago

Dennis Norman

Dennis Norman

This morning the S&P/Case-Shiller Index report for September was released showing that home prices in the US increased in 3rd quarter 2009 by 3.1 percent (seasonally adjusted) from 2nd quarter. The 3rd quarter index shows a 8.9 percent decline from a year ago, however this is a marked improvement from the 14.7 decline from a year ago in the 2nd quarter. This is the second consecutive quarterly increase (2nd quarter also increased 3.1 percent from 1st quarter) and, according to the report, are now at “similar levels to what they were in autumn 2003.”

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index report has a composite index also that covers 20 large metropolitan areas and this index saw an increase in 3rd quarter as well, albeit a rather modest 0.3 percent increase. The 20 city index is down 9.4 percent from a year ago, but like the US home price index above, the annual decline is an improvement from August when it was down 11.3 percent.

case-shiller us national home price index chart
I like the S&P/Case-Shiller Index and feel it is one of the more accurate ways to measure what is happening to home prices in the metro areas covered by their report and, since they cover the major metros, a fairly good reflection of what is going on in the U.S. housing market as a whole. One of the things I like is they are actually tracking sales prices of the same homes through time, therefore truly an “apples to apples” comparison of home values. Many economists, including those at the National Association of REALTORS(R) track median home prices and base changes in home prices upon median prices. Personally I feel median home prices can be skewed for a time period by an influx of sales of lower-priced, or higher-priced homes. For example, the last couple of months have seen a big run-up in sale of first-time home-buyer homes as a result of the tax credit. I would suspect this will end up bringing down the median home prices although it doesn’t mean that home prices dropped, just that a bunch of lower priced homes sold during the period.
case shiller report - september 2009 20 city composite chart

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Related posts:

  1. Foreclosures in third quarter 2009 increase 23 percent from a year ago Dennis Norman This morning RealtyTrac® released its U.S. Foreclosure Market...
  2. Reports and headlines say home sales increased 10.1 percent in October, up 23.5 percent from a year ago; I say up 6.6 percent for the month and almost even with last year Dennis Norman National Association of REALTORS Report: According to the...
  3. Short Sales increase 45 percent in 2nd quarter; Foreclosures up by 23 percent Dennis Norman Many investors see short-sales and foreclosures as opportunities...
  4. Home price declines appear to be easing Dennis Norman This morning the S&P/Case-Shiller Index report for August...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>