Home-price declines are accelerating nationwide, pushing a hoped-for turnaround in the housing market further down the road.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index that measures home prices in 20 major metro areas dropped 12.7% in February from a year earlier — the sharpest decline in the data’s two-decade history.
Areas of the country that saw the greatest run-ups in prices in the first half of the decade are now seeing some of the steepest declines. Home prices in the Las Vegas, Miami and Phoenix markets fell in February by more than 20% from a year earlier.
Even after sharp drops for more than a year, however, home prices in Los Angeles, Miami and Washington, D.C., remain more than double their levels at the start of the decade.
Source: Sudeep Reddy, The Wall Street Journal, 4-30-08
