The widely watched Case-Schiller home-price index shows that prices in this year's third quarter were 3.9 percent below 2010 and now stand where they were in the first quarter of 2003.
One bit of good news in the third-quarter report, released today by Standard & Poor's, is that the year-to-year decline was smaller than the second quarter's 5.8 percent. Third-quarter prices in the National Home Price Index were 0.1 percent up from the three-month period before.
Focusing in a bit with its 10-City and 20-City composite indices, S&P said prices were down 3.3 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively in September from 12 months before. In 18 of 20 metropolitan statistical areas it covers, the report had falling price-change rates in all but Detroit and Washington, D.C.
Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix hit new index lows, S&P said.
In a bad-news, good-news analysis, the report says, "The plunging collapse of prices seen in 2007-2009 seems to be behind us," but it adds, "Any chance for a sustained recovery will probably need a stronger economy."
