No Home Price Stabilization

The November Case Shiller home price index data was released today and the numbers confirmed the acceleration in home price declines we first witnessed in the median price indexes. While I think its safe to say that no one thought these numbers would be pretty, I imagine few thought we would see 2% declines across the board:

According to my calculations San Diego is now down 16.3% from its peak in November of 2005. The 10 City Composite is down 9.4% since its peak in June 2006 and the 20 City Composite is down 8.6% since its peak in July 2006. Trillions of dollars of home equity have already been lost and price declines are not showing any signs of slowing.

When you break this data down into tiers and you adjust the numbers for inflation the data gets even more depressing. In San Diego the real price of "low-priced" homes (its all relative because for San Diego a $446,000 home is considered low-priced) has fallen by nearly 30% since its peak:


Because this post has been fairly depressing up to this point I figured I would take the first graph and invert it so that it "looks" like home prices are actually going up. I have found that charts that show prices going up and to the right generally make people very happy. So here goes:


Okay maybe that didn't work for anyone else, but it brought a smile to my face . . . .

Hat Tip: S&P Case Shiller, Piggington