Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Home Prices Post Steepest Drop in 20 Years

Yes, that was the title on the front page of Yahoo! Finance. :)


http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070828/home_price_index.html?.v=10


U.S. home prices fell 3.2 percent in the second quarter, the steepest rate of decline since Standard & Poor's began its nationwide housing index in 1987, the research group said Tuesday.

The decline in home prices around the nation shows no evidence of a market recovery anytime soon, one of the architects of the index said.

MacroMarkets LLC Chief Economist Robert Shiller said the declining residential real estate market "shows no signs of slowing down."


later in the article:

The median price of a home sold last month slid to $230,200, down by 0.6 percent from the median price a year ago. It marked the 12th consecutive month that home prices have declined, a record stretch.

The rest notes how the problem is still spreading.

In some ways this is just more of the same... what we expected. On the other... its driving it in that this isn't a short term problem. 12 months of national should start to wake people up. But don't think this is even close to being done.

Got popcorn?
Neil

4 comments:

Rob Dawg said...

Got a parachute?

TJandTheBear said...

Preferably golden!

Anonymous said...

I didn't know where else to post this, I hope it is useful...

http://tinyurl.com/yqea7k

How big is the mortgage mess? No one knows
Lack of records, dislosure rules make damage to economy hard to estimate

Scariest point to consider in the story,
"About 90,000 nonbank mortgage lenders dotted the landscape last fall,
when state regulators conducted their first formal survey. Dozens of bankruptcies and closings in recent months have likely whittled that number, and 25,000 workers lost jobs in August, aggravating worries about the downturn’s impact on the economy."

90,000 lightly regulated to unregulated lenders pumping in funny money into real estate, I can't even think of the consequences when this whole mess unravels. :(

wannabuy said...

I can't even think of the consequences when this whole mess unravels.

The bigger consequence is that the credit default swap market is in a panic. Buyers of the swaps like to use them as collateral on commercial paper. That isn't being accepted any more.

Interesting times...
Neil