Downward Spiral of Residential Real Estate Prices Continues

Single-family homes in January continued to see broad based declines in pricing across the U.S. with 13 of the 20 largest metro areas showing record rates of annual decline, and 14 reporting declines in excess of 10% compared to the same month last year, according to the new Standard & Poor's S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. "Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path, with all of the 20 metro areas reporting annual declines, and nine of the MSAs falling more than 20% in the last year," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P. Seven metro areas reported declines in excess of 4% in January. Phoenix had the worst decline with -5.5%. On a marginally positive note, S&P/Case said Cleveland, Los Angeles and Las Vegas are reporting a relative improvement in year-over-year returns, in terms of lesser rates of decline than last month's values. The two worst performing cities, in terms of annual declines, were Phoenix (-35%), and Las Vegas (-32.5%). Dallas, Denver and Cleveland fared the best in terms of annual declines, falling 4.9%, 5.1% and 5.2%, respectively.