Remember when real estate fans assuaged your fears about escalating home prices? Dont worry, they said. Real estate is local; there has never been a national housing slump.
Well we arent quite there yet but we are back in record-setting territory again. This time a record drop. For the first time ever, more than half of the 150 cities measured reported a price drop and we arent just talking about California or Florida either.
Never say never. And keep watching sub-prime mortgage defaults.
Home Prices Decline in Majority of Cities
February 15, 2007 11:29 p.m.
Home prices declined from a year earlier in about half of all metropolitan areas in the fourth quarter, the National Association of Realtors reported.
It was the first time the trade group has recorded declining or unchanged prices in the majority of cities covered since it began collecting the data in 1979, a Realtors spokesman said.
In the latest quarter, the median price declined in 73 metro areas, increased in 71 and was flat in five. The biggest decrease was in the Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice area of Florida, down 18% from a year before. Many of the biggest decliners were in Florida, where a glut of new condominiums is weighing on the market, and in Rust Belt cities like Youngstown and Toledo, Ohio, hurt by shrinking industrial employment.
