S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices Report Record Decline

Data through October 2007, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show broadbased declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the United States, marking the 10th consecutive month of negative annual returns and the 23rd consecutive month of decelerating returns.

The chart above depicts the annual returns of the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Indices. The 10-City Composite’s annual decline of 6.7% is a record low. The previous largest decline on record was 6.3% recorded in April 1991. In October, the 20-City Composite recorded an annual decline of 6.1%.

“No matter how you look at these data, it is obvious that the current state of the single-family housing market remains grim,” says Robert J. Shiller, Chief Economist at MacroMarkets LLC. “Not only did the 10-City Composite post a record low in its annual growth rate, but 11 of the 20 metro areas did the same. If you look at the monthly figures, every MSA went down in both October and September. Eleven of the 20 MSAs, in addition to the two composites, recorded their single largest monthly decline on record in October. For both the 10-City and 20-City composites this was a decline of 1.4% over September”

Miami surpassed Tampa in October, reporting a double-digit annual decline of 12.4%. Tampa followed with -11.8%, Detroit with -11.2% and San Diego with -11.1%. Six of the metro areas are now posting double digit declines in their annual growth rates. Atlanta and Dallas finally entered negative territory, with declines of 0.7% and 0.1%, respectively, leaving only Charlotte, Portland and Seattle as the MSAs still experiencing positive annual growth rates.

This table summarizes the results for October 2007. The S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices are revised for the 24 prior months, based on the receipt of additional source data. More than 20 years of history for these data series is available, and can be accessed in full by going to www.homeprice.standardandpoors.com

The S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices are published on the last Tuesday of each month at 9:00 am ET. They are constructed to accurately track the price path of typical single-family homes located in each metropolitan area provided. Each index combines matched price pairs for thousands of individual houses from the available universe of arms-length sales data.

The S&P/Case-Shiller® National U.S. Home Price Index tracks the value of single-family housing within the United States. The index is a composite of single-family home price indices for the nine U.S. Census divisions and is calculated quarterly. The S&P/Case-Shiller® Composite of 10 Home Price Index is a value-weighted average of the 10 original metro area indices. The S&P/Case-Shiller® Composite of 20 Home Price Index is a value-weighted average of the 20 metro area indices. The indices have a base value of 100 in January 2000; thus, for example, a current index value of 150 translates to a 50% appreciation rate since January 2000 for a typical home located within the subject market.

These indices are generated and published under agreements between Standard & Poor’s, Fiserv and MacroMarkets LLC. MacroMarkets LLC possesses exclusive license and sublicensing rights to the S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices for the purposes of developing, structuring and trading financial products. Source: Standard & Poor's