The new Case-Shiller report came out last week and the headlines are not good for home prices once again. Although the data released has a 2 month lag and is through October of 2010. The 20 city composite fell 0.8% from October 2009 and the 10 city composite was only up 0.2%. Only 4 markets showed year over year gains (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington DC) and 6 markets (Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte, Portland OR, Seattle and Tampa) hit their lowest levels since home prices started to decline in 2006 and 2007, which means those markets (and our market) have fallen further than the lows seen in Spring of 2009.
Really though it makes sense when you consider that the Seattle area (along with Portland and Charlotte) did not start declining until late 2007 and into 2008 when everywhere else started the decline in 2006 and 2007 when our market was still appreciating. In looking at the actual overall off peak, we still fair better than the hardest hit markets of Florida, Las Vegas and Arizona.
In the analysis of the web site The Seattle Bubble:
(http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2010/12/29/case-shiller-tiers-all-tiers-take-a-hit-in-october/)
They separate our market into 3 pricing tiers of low (less than $259,821), mid ($259,821 to $402,705) and high (above $402,705). As a reference point, the median sold price for King County in December 2010 was $349,000 (Woodinville $369,475, Redmond $455,000, Sammamish $460,000, Kirkland $485,000 and Bellevue $700,000). In their analysis, our off peak is 31.6% for the low tier, 26.7% off peak for the middle tier, and 23.7% off peak for the high tier. In perspective, still much better than most markets which is one reason why pundits are saying we still have further to decline.
When the reports come out at the end of January showing November’s numbers, it will be interesting to see how we performed given we saw (myself included) an uptick in sales activity in November and December (from the lack luster fall time frame) as interest rates increased and drove buyers to act at a time that usually sees less activity.
For the entire Case/Shiller report:
http://www.standardandpoors.com/servlet/BlobServer?blobheadername3=MDT-Type&blobcol=urldocumentfile&blobtable=SPComSecureDocument&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3Ddownload.pdf&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobheadername1=content-type&blobwhere=1245281640766&blobheadervalue3=abinary%3B+charset%3DUTF-8&blobnocache=true
As always, your comments and questions are appreciated!