Home Prices Continue to Slide at a Record Pace

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index reported on Jan. 27 an 18.2% year-over-year drop among those 20 major metropolitan areas. The index has declined for 28 consecutive months.

The report covers: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.

The areas with the biggest year-to-year price declines were Phoenix (-32.9%), Las Vegas (-31.6%), and San Francisco (-30.8%). For the third consecutive month, all 20 metropolitan areas showed a monthly decline.

David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P, said in a news release:

"The freefall in residential real estate continued through November 2008. Since August 2006, the 10-City and 20-City composites have declined every month."

The October report showed a year-over-year decline of 18.1%. Need anyone question whether things are improving? They are not, and as many economists have said, we have to reach a bottom with stable home prices before the economy will begin to recover.