While there have been some signs of recovery in the housing market, David. M. Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor's index committee, says that home prices have made no improvement. S&P released its home price indices yesterday, which showed that in the first quarter, home prices fell at the fastest annual pace on record.
"Declines in residential real estate continued at a steady pace into March," Blitzer said.
For the first quarter, the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index showed a decline of 19.1 percent from the same period a year before -- the greatest drop in the index's 21 years, with home prices now at the same level they were in the fourth quarter of 2002. The national index is released every quarter.
The Sun Belt continues to show the largest price declines;15 of the 20 U.S. major metropolitan areas measured by the indices had price declines of more than 10 percent from the first quarter of 2008.
Home prices continuted to slide through March -- only three metropolitan areas showed no decline in price from February to March, with Charlotte, N.C., and Denver showing small increases in price, and Dallas exhibiting no change in home prices.
Showing the largest decline in price from February to March were Minneapolis with a -6.1% difference in price (and a -23.3 percent year to year change), Detroit with a home-price change of -4.9 percent (and a year to year difference of -25.7 %), Phoenix with a slide of 4.5 percent in home prices (and a year to year decline of 36 percent) and Miami with a price drop of 3.5 percent (and a year-to-year decline of 28.7 percent).
To see how your metropolitan area fared, check out the complete S&P/Case-Shiller report.
—Lauren Baier Kim