The Case-Shiller Housing Index is the most accurate dataset of home prices, however, it is slow. The median home price, which is less accurate, comes out about 6 weeks before the Case-Shiller data.
Phoenix Housing Price Index
Following the August sub-prime “meltdown” and the tightening of lending standards even for prime borrowers, the September price depreciation in metro Phoenix was 1.74 percent which is a huge decline for one month.
The large decline isn’t a surprise. Last month I wrote here, “… we know from already released median home price data that September will show a sharper price decline. It’s very likely to be above 1%. The “sub-prime meltdown” in August will be reflected in the September index.”
The largest previous monthly decline in this cycle was in February 2007 when the decline was 0.98 percent. From the peak in July 2006, metro Phoenix prices have declined 9.74 percent according to the Case-Shiller Index.
Looking at the previously released median home price numbers for Phoenix, October could see a decline in the same ballpark as the September decline. If that is the case, that might signal an acceleration of depreciation.
It’s looking like 2008 will be an exciting year!
3 responses so far ↓
1 Andrew Upson // Nov 29, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Man, nearly every time I check your blog I’m reminded of how glad I am that we got our house sold and closed back in July. Much as I hated to price our house at $320k, nevermind take $20k under list price at the sale, if we hadn’t done that we’d probably be lucky to get even $290k for it now, if it would even draw offers at all.
2 John Wake - Real Estate // Nov 29, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Andrew,
Especially in a declining market, the sooner you sell the better.
3 Andrew Upson // Nov 29, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Darn tootin’.
I was starting to sweat having to cover the cost of keeping that house while paying rent in the new location since the temp corporate housing ran out a few days before we closed. I had figured that it would cost us at least $1800/month between mortgage, pool service, utilities, and yard care to hold that house on the market. Add to that the $1000/month rent at the new place, plus utilities and whatnot and it would have been very hard to anything more than just keep things even each month.
Praise the Lord that we were otherwise debt free and had access to money (mutual funds)to act as a quasi emergency fund if we had really needed it.
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