Housing Overvaluation Declines Further

The incidence of overvaluation in the nation's housing market continued to decline in the second quarter, as the overall number of single-family housing units deemed to be overvalued declined from 16% to 14%, according to an analysis released by Global Insight Inc., Waltham, Mass.The quarterly housing valuation analysis, House Prices in America (which looked at the top 330 U.S. real estate markets), also found that the percentage of single-family asset value deemed to be overvalued fell from 28% in the first quarter to 25% in the second quarter. "Indeed, the price declines thus far can be seen as relatively mild given the dramatic fall in home sales," said Jeannine Cataldi, manager of Global Insight's Regional Real Estate Service. "But the evidence indicates that prices are slowly reverting to their historic relationship to economic fundamentals." The analysis is a joint effort of Global Insight and National City Corp., Cleveland. More information can be found online at http://www.globalinsight.com/housingvaluation and http://www.nationalcity.com/housevaluation.