Home prices continue to slide

Lets see...fewer people qualify for loans under "sound principles," the GSE's are limiting LTV's in declining markets (gas to the devaluation inferno), people are walking away from homes, yes...I would pretty much say that were not quite at the "bottom" yet.  This is a line from Prudent Bear that illustrates how our economic resiliency is based on delusion:

Weak data - Fed eases, stocks rally.  
Strong data - Strong economy, stocks rally.  
Consensus data - Lower volatility, stocks rally.  
Bank loses US$ 8 billion -Bad news all out of the way, stocks rally.  
Oil price up - Good for energy producers, stocks rally.  
Oil price down - Good for consumers, stocks rally.  
US$ down - Good for exporters, stocks rally.  
US$ up - Lower inflation, stocks rally.  
Inflation up Good for commodities and asset prices, stocks rally.  
Inflation down - Fed eases, stocks rally.  
Climate change Soft commodities up, stocks rally.  
World ends - Good for disaster recovery companies, stocks rally. (from prudent bear)

I keep posting this next graph because it illustrates the reality of the 2nd wave of destruction coming in 2009-2010 that is going to be more devastating than the subprime explosion...sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but we have a long way to go before we are out of this mess when the option arm and ALT-A resets occur on homes with zero or negative equity, "walk away" doesn't come close to describing what is going to happen...it is going to be "give away."

Great!  Another tool to show my wife why it looks like I am on vacation.  :)

Thanks For the info.

Make it a great day!

Spencer,

That is pretty descriptive of where we are. Notable is that the serious price declines are only evident in certain areas like Southern Nevada, lots of California and Florida. The message is it's local. Good stuff.

This post seems to have the (correct) message that real estate is local, which is in sharp contrast to your recent "napkin" post, wherein you made a sweeping generalization about what to expect for your home based on whether you were in the city or in the suburbs and what price range your house was in:

Circles and Smileys and Frownies: explaining housing prices

Looking at the maps you provided here, I was happy to see that Austin was among the areas that are holding value.  Unfortunately, this post sort of falls in line with the media gloom-and-doom stuff that we have been hearing for awhile now, especially with the headline you chose. 

I hate to say this because it will sound like I want to debate (which I really don't), but this is the type of post that makes my job more difficult.  I have clients who hear about the "national" real estate market, which doesn't even exist, and they make their decisions accordingly.  If they hear that average prices are falling, they hold off rather than purchasing, so I have to go against the media and show them that prices are actually on the way up in the area they are considering. 

I suggest everyone read this article. It puts a different spin on things.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121003604494869449.html

I like the graphs and such, but I wouldn't take all of the numbers at face value. I've found zillow to be a good starting point for some general information, but I've also discovered some major discrepancies. But thanks a ton for posting!

Hey Erik-

It's Drew from Zillow. Yes -- you are certainly welcome, and encouraged, to include this data in your own blogs and e-mails. If you'd like to embed the spreadsheet Spencer included in this post, you can click the down arrow in the upper left and you'll be given the option to grab the embed code.

Further, I wrote up a "how-to" article explaining how to use edit grid to build your own embeddable spreadsheet over at the Geek Estate Blog.

Hope this helps. 

Do the numbers look accurate in your area?  I practice neaar Chicago and the homes that are closing are down more than 8% from their peaks.  At least that it what it looks like in my small corner/