I think I can, I think I can...said the housing market, but once again it did not.
The S&P Case Schiller price index for the Chicago-area detached housing indicates that prices have fallen 37.5% since the peak of September 2006. Furthermore, the prices declined another 2.5% from January to February and the decline was 6.9% when measured on a year over year basis.
“While there might be pieces of good news in this report, such as some improvement in many annual rates of return, February 2012 data confirm that, broadly-speaking, home prices continued to decline in the early months of the year,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Indices, said in a statement. “Nine (markets) — Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Las Vegas, New York, Portland, Seattle and Tampa — and both composites hit new post-crisis lows."
Prices will continue to drop here as lending standards remain tight and the large number of financially distressed homes drags down the market, says Tom Feltner, vice president at the Chicago-based Woodstock Institute, an advocacy organization.
As reported in Crains, the S&P Case-Shiller index of Chicago-area condominium prices fell 2.4 percent in February from January, also its sixth monthly decline in a row. The index was down 9.1 percent from a year earlier and 39.3 percent from its peak in September 2007. The index is roughly where it was in the fall of 1999.
Michael Hobbs, PahRoo Appraisal & Consultancy
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