There is some good news on the housing front, although this “good news” may only be a relative issue and we are having to go back to February in this data. The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index for February did stay on path for its never-ending slide, but the good news is that the record declines were broken after 16 months. The report showed that 15 of the 20 major metropolitan areas posted average sale price declines of 10% or more and housing prices on a national average look more similar to 2003 levels. The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (NYSE: XHB) is down 1.4% at $13.37 so far this morning.
Ten of the 20 metro areas saw record drops. Again. We are now at a 32% declines from the peak of mid-2006 for the top-10 and down 31% for the top-20. This marks 31 consecutive monthly declines. Prices were down 19% year over year in the 10 and 20 city index readings year over year. Compared to January, this was a decline of 2.1% for the top-10 and a decline of 2.2% for the top-20.
If you want any additional silver lining, we have at least seen more recent news than this with March housing data. The data is still poor here by any metrics. It is just less-poor than before on a relative basis.
JON C. OGG
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