WORLD PROPERTY CHANNEL ®

(NEW YORK, NY) -- Home prices in the U.S. are down for the 10th month in a row, according to a new S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices analysis released today.

Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Francisco, in that order, were hit the hardest compared with percentage changes in 2007.

Dallas, Charlotte, Denver, Boston, Cleveland and New York, in that order, suffered lesser price drops over the past 12 months.

Fourteen of the 20 metro areas are showing record rates of annual decline and 14 are now reporting declines over 10% versus October 2007.

David M. Blitzer

"The bear market continues with home prices back to their March 2004 levels," says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's.

"Both composite Indices and 14 of the 20 metro areas are reporting new record rates of decline. As of October 2008, the 10-City Composite is down 25.0% from its mid-2006 peak, and the 20-City Composite is down 23.4%.

"In October, we also saw three new markets enter the 'double-digit' club. Atlanta, Seattle and Portland are reporting annual rates of decline of 10.5%, 10.2% and 10.1%, respectively.

"While not yet experiencing as severe a contraction as in the Sunbelt, it seems the Pacific Northwest and Mid-Atlantic South are not immune to the overall demise in the housing market."

(Click chart below depicting the annual returns of the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. Following the lead of the 14 metro areas described above, the 10-City and 20-City Composites set new records, with annual declines of 19.1% and 18.0%, respectively.)

Blitzer says three of the metro areas have given back, on average, more than 30% of the value of homes since October of last year.

Phoenix remains the weakest market, reporting an annual decline of 32.7%, followed by Las Vegas, down 31.7%, and San Francisco down 31.0%. Miami, Los Angeles, and San Diego were close behind with annual declines of 29.0%, 27.9% and 26.7%, respectively.  

Monthly data also do not show much improvement in the national housing market. All 20 metro areas, and the two composites, posted their second consecutive monthly decline.

In addition, six of the MSAs had their largest monthly decline on record: Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, Minneapolis, Tampa and Washington.

"Most of the positive monthly data recorded in the spring and summer months merely reflects seasonal patterns in home prices, as opposed to a turnaround in the downward spiral in national home prices," Blitzer says.

Dallas and Charlotte faired the best in October in terms of relative year-over-year returns. Still in negative territory, their declines remained in low single digits of -3.0% and -4.4%, respectively.

"It should be noted, however, that both of these values are worse than those reported in the September data," Blitzer points out.

Charlotte also reported its second consecutive largest monthly decline on record, down 1.8%. Cleveland and Denver were the only markets that showed any improvement in its year-over-year returns compared to last month's report.

(Click the table below for summary of the market-by-market results for October 2008.)

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