NEW YORK, May 27, 2008
U.S. Housing Market Battling, Reports Show
Home Prices Take Biggest First-Quarter Dive In 20 Years, But New Home Sales Up In April
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Nineteen of the 20 metro areas surveyed reported annual declines, with 15 of them posting record lows. Six metro areas lost more than 20 percent. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
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Interactive Eye On The Economy In-depth features on U.S. markets, taxes, employment and the Federal Reserve.
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News Tools Foreclosure Rates A state-by-state look at foreclosure rates, which were up 81 percent nationwide in 2008.
While U.S. home prices dropped at the sharpest rate in two decades during the first quarter, according to a closely watched index, the Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes rose in April for the first time in six months.
Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller said its national home price index fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988. The quarterly index covers all nine U.S. Census divisions.
The narrower indices also set record declines. The 20-city index tumbled 14.4 percent during the quarter, the lowest since that index was started in 2001. The 10-city index plunged 15.3 percent, a record in its 20-year history.
"There are very few silver linings that one can see in the data. Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path," said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee.
Nineteen of the 20 metro areas reported annual declines, with 15 of them posting record lows. Six metro areas lost more than 20 percent.
Las Vegas had the worst quarterly performance, falling 25.9 percent, followed by Miami and Phoenix. Only Charlotte, N.C., stayed above water, gaining less than 1 percent over the previous year.
Meanwhile, The Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes rose 3.3 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units.
But the government revised March activity lower to show an even bigger drop of 11 percent to an annual rate of 509,000, which was the weakest pace for sales since April 1991. Economists believe that new home sales will remain weak for some time as the housing industry struggles with falling prices and rising mortgage foreclosures, which are dumping even more homes on an already glutted market.
The Commerce report showed that the median price of a new home sold in April dropped to $246,100 in April, down 4.2 percent from April 2007.
The Commerce report on new home sales showed the April rebound was led by a huge 41.7 percent surge in sales in the Northeast. Sales were up 8.3 percent in the West and 5.8 percent in the Midwest. The only region which saw a decline in sales in April was the South, where sales fell by 2.4 percent.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Re: "Home Prices Take Biggest First-Quarter Dive In 20 Years"
Don''t start panicking yet.
It looks like it will get a LOT worse before long.
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Posted by jamesm12341 at 11:49 AM : May 27, 2008
+ report abuse
It means that PEOPLE who actually BELIEVE that American''s who differ with their Political View''s CAUSED the Attack on this nation, do NOT have much in the way of BRAIN POWER! Oh, just in case YOU are one of those LOSER''s. IT was THEIR Religious Extremist who attacked this nation and it was PLANNED by those in the Safe Haven AGREED to by President Bush!! IF Franklin Roosevelt had ran WW II like Bush and Friends did this, we''d all have to speak German wouldn''t we??
I''m sure all the people invlved in a re-fi will jump at that, bankers, underwriters, etc... Who will pay the costs to re-fi. What about the investors on those pools of loans? Are they just going to roll over and take a loss out of good will. With this plan you would bail out the speculators and start yet another cycle. The real answer is to let the market work its course.
please this is a simple thing to fix, why are you bending over for all of the wallstreet scum.
you have the right to do what this paulson/ben did for wallstreet,saying they had to to save america. so you can say the same thing, but this time you would be saveing america, and not wallstreet.
you must come out and stop the forcloseing of all these millions of homes, now,
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS MANDATE THAT ALL MORTGAGES THAT HAVE BEEN TAKEN OUT FROM 2000 TO 2007 BY ALL AMERICANS TO BE RE-FI A.S.A.P. NO EXCEPTIONS,
NO MATTER WHAT THE CREDIT IS, THEY WILL RE-FI EVERYONE AT JUST OVER PRIME, AND AT A RATE OF 40% OF WHAT IS OWED ON THE PROPERTY( PERSONAL HOMES ONLY)!!
WHY, BECAUSE MOST HOST ARE SELLING AT FORCLOSER FOR 20 TO 30 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR, SO AS TO WHAT PAULSON SAID TO BEARSTEARN 2 DOLLARS IS BETTER THAN NO DOLLARS SO TAKE THE DEAL..NOW REMEMBER ALL OF YOU, IF THIS COMPANY IN 6 MONTHS LOST 98% OF THEIR VALUE FROM 700 BILLION TO WHAT IS IT NOW. AND FOR SOMEONE TO COME IN AND BUY IT FOR NOTHING, WHAT IS THE REAL VALUE OF ALL THESE HOMES???NOBODY KNOWS, SO WHY NOT JUST START OVER??? AND STOP THE BLEEDING FOR ALL AMERICANS.
FOR-AMERICA@HOTMAIL.COM
DAVID A BELANGER
FOR COMMON SENSE THIS IS SO EASY TO FIX DONT MAKE IT HARDER THAN IT IS PEOPLE.
THE GREAT POTATOHEAD PAULSON,AND BEN ARE IN TALKS WITH ANOTHER WALLSTREET FIRM GOING DOWN
***=Dykke
Personally, I think Bull-*** Brick Layers have more credibility.
See you in the soup lines, folks.
Oh, it''s not a typo. It''s there to give you whack jobs something to point out and feel good about ;)
As gasoline soars, poeple dont want to drive big distances from the cities to outlying burbs and pay high heat and A/C bills. If you bought a $500K house in the burbs, its going to get tougher.
Did I read that right? Down 25.9% in 3 months.
Godsoccermom- you must we with the christian coalitian to have brain power this low.
Thanks Bushies!
CHALLENGE YOUR TAX APPRAISALS. Two thirds of all challenges are successful.
Posted by jmcgilvray at 10:20 AM : May 27, 2008
Of course, your local schools, safety, and other public services will accelerate their slide into the economic hell that Reagan began, but who cares, right?
As long as you can stuff more and more money under your mattress to comfort you when the day comes that you die atop it....
Posted by gopsoccermom at 09:48 AM : May 27, 2008
lollll...while I would agree with you about it being Clinton''s fault, I would not call his "marital infidelity" the causitive factor.
It was his catering to the GOP''s base - the corporations and the wealthy elite - by not doing anything to stop the enormous transition in America''s inequality curve brought about by Reagan''s tax cuts, greatly exacerbated by his inequitable free trade treaties that first gutted our manufacturing industries and then our service industries.
The latter was particularly harmful, as the trade treaties forced stagnation in our job market and in our wages but allowed the corporations and the wealthy elite to profit at even higher rates as the cost of manufacturing those products that are sold here shrank dramatically due to lower wage costs and absent environmental regulations in other nations.
Worst of all, however, those trade treaties removed the "We hang together, or we hang seperately!" factor from America.
Now the corporations and the wealthy elite have diversified into enough countries that they no longer have the majority of their capital at risk in America''s economy - which means that they can fiddle while America burns.
And in fact, they can find an advantage in the destruction of America''s economy: Starving, homeless people work cheap.
please this is a simple thing to fix, why are you bending over for all of the wallstreet scum.
you have the right to do what this paulson/ben did for wallstreet,saying they had to to save america. so you can say the same thing, but this time you would be saveing america, and not wallstreet.
you must come out and stop the forcloseing of all these millions of homes, now,
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS MANDATE THAT ALL MORTGAGES THAT HAVE BEEN TAKEN OUT FROM 2000 TO 2007 BY ALL AMERICANS TO BE RE-FI A.S.A.P. NO EXCEPTIONS,
NO MATTER WHAT THE CREDIT IS, THEY WILL RE-FI EVERYONE AT JUST OVER PRIME, AND AT A RATE OF 40% OF WHAT IS OWED ON THE PROPERTY( PERSONAL HOMES ONLY)!!
WHY, BECAUSE MOST HOST ARE SELLING AT FORCLOSER FOR 20 TO 30 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR, SO AS TO WHAT PAULSON SAID TO BEARSTEARN 2 DOLLARS IS BETTER THAN NO DOLLARS SO TAKE THE DEAL..NOW REMEMBER ALL OF YOU, IF THIS COMPANY IN 6 MONTHS LOST 98% OF THEIR VALUE FROM 700 BILLION TO WHAT IS IT NOW. AND FOR SOMEONE TO COME IN AND BUY IT FOR NOTHING, WHAT IS THE REAL VALUE OF ALL THESE HOMES???NOBODY KNOWS, SO WHY NOT JUST START OVER??? AND STOP THE BLEEDING FOR ALL AMERICANS.
FOR-AMERICA@HOTMAIL.COM
DAVID A BELANGER
FOR COMMON SENSE THIS IS SO EASY TO FIX DONT MAKE IT HARDER THAN IT IS PEOPLE.
- by gopsoccermom May 27, 2008 12:48 PM EDT
- This is all Clintons fault. Make no mistake about it. God Almighty will make us suffer for all of his martial infidelity.
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