Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Housing contunues to get pounded but the rate of decline is slowing

The housing market is maintaining its massive decline. Here is the Case-Shiller composite of 20 cities home prices:



The pace of year over year drop may be slowing a bit:



The bottom is still way off, but the rate of decline may be no longer as severe.

From MarketWatch:
On a month-to-month basis, prices in 20 selected cities fell 0.6% in April, with declines in 11 cities, compared with a decline of 2.2% in March. The overall annual pace of decline has slowed, said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee for Standard & Poor's, which compiles the Case-Shiller index.

"Thirteen of the 20 metro areas also saw improvement in their annual return compared to that of March. Furthermore, every metro area, except for Charlotte, recorded an improvement in monthly returns over March," Blitzer said in a statement. "While one month's data cannot determine if a turnaround has begun; it seems that some stabilization may be appearing in some of the regions."