Yet another bit of bad news hit the housing sector yesterday – Standard & Poor’s reported continued record declines in the prices of existing homes across the United States and a continuation in the trend of double digit declines across many cities. The latest S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report, measuring value changes on residential properties, shows national home prices dropped by a record 16.3 percent during the month of July when compared to the same time a year ago.
“There are signs of a slow down in the rate of decline across the metro areas, but no evidence of a bottom,” says David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P. Blitzer went on to say that it’s hard to read anything positive into the news when cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix report annual declines as large as -29.9 percent and -29.3 percent, respectively. Miami came in with the third largest decline, at -28.2 percent.

While all 20 cities in the report are still in negative territory on a year-over-year basis, the Sunbelt continues to be the hardest hit by the housing crisis, with the seven cities representing that area reporting annual declines between 20 and 30 percent.
“While some cities did show some marginal improvement over last month’s data, there is still very little evidence of any particular region experiencing an absolute turnaround,” Blitzer continued.
Atlanta, Dallas, Minneapolis, and Tampa showed improvements in their annual and monthly returns, but all four are still too close to their recent lows to determine if the markets have stabilized.
The housing market peaked around June/July of 2006. Since that time, the S&P 10-city composite has fallen by a total of 21.1 percent and the 20-city composite is down 19.5 percent.
To view S&P’s full report for July, including a summary of individual metro areas, click here. For more than 20 years of historical home price data, click here.