S&P/Case-Shiller: November 20-metro index falls 3.7% year over year

By Inman News, Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home-price indices report, updated through November 2011, continues a downward trend, “and there are few, if any, signs in the numbers that a turning point is close at hand,” said David Blitzer, an S&P indices executive.

The firm’s monthly 20-city and 10-city indices track housing prices for single-family homes in large, geographically diverse U.S. metropolitan areas. The indices were both down for the month and for the year: each experienced a 1.3 percent drop in November over October levels, and fell 3.6 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively, year over year in November 2011.

The drop is spread fairly evenly across the 20 tracked metros. Eighteen of the 20 experienced year-over-year declines, and 19 of the 20 experienced month-to-month declines.

Detroit and Washington are the only metros among the 20 with year over year rises in home price, according to the report, released Tuesday. Phoenix, the only metro with a month-to-month increase for November, with a 0.6 percent increase.

Atlanta continued its steep slide in pricing, 2.5 percent month-over-month November indexed housing price decline, continues it steep slide, which tops the 20 metros in its year-over-year drop, at 11.8 percent. Las Vegas, in year-over-year decline, is not far behind with a 9.1 percent drop.

The 10- and 20-city composite indices, which track pretty closely, reached their peaks in 2006, and November 2011’s numbers put both composite indices just slightly above their seven-year lows, at 1 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.