Eighteen of the 20 cities in the index showed a year-over- year decline, led by a 9.8 percent drop in Atlanta.
Detroit showed the biggest year-over-year increase, with prices rising 3.7 percent in the 12 months to September. Property values in Washington were up 1 percent.
Nationally, prices decreased 3.9 percent in the third quarter from the same time in 2010. They increased 0.1 percent from the previous three months before seasonal adjustment and dropped 1.2 percent after taking those changes into account.
A pipeline of seized properties threatens to weigh on prices even more as a temporary halt on foreclosures stemming from faulty seizures comes to an end. In the third quarter, U.S. lenders started foreclosures on more homes, the first increase in a year, as bank moratoriums that clogged the pipeline abated.
"Housing market activity remained very weak," minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's Nov. 1-2 meeting showed last week. "The large overhang of foreclosed and distressed properties along with limited demand in an environment of uncertainty about future home prices and tight underwriting standards for mortgage loans" weighed on the market, it said.
Builders, which are competing with the 3.33 million unit glut of previously owned homes, sold fewer new houses in the U.S. than forecast in October, Commerce Department data showed yesterday. Demand is on pace to reach 301,000 this year, less than the 323,000 homes sold in 2010, which marked the fewest sales since data-keeping began in 1963.
"We're in a market that's quite fragile," Ara Hovnanian, chairman and chief executive officer of Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., said during a Nov. 9 investor conference. "While delinquency rates have taken a little dip, on the whole, there is nothing that says that foreclosures are going to change dramatically over the near term, however you define that."
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1-months 3-months 1-year 2-years 3-years
earlier earlier earlier earlier earlier
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US Composite-20 -0.64% 0.35% -3.59% -3.18% -12.17%
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Washington DC 1.17% 3.13% 0.98% 4.07% -1.02%
Portland 0.14% 1.17% -5.68% -9.10% -19.79%
New York 0.08% 1.89% -2.57% -2.80% -11.34%
Phoenix -0.21% -0.47% -6.48% -8.27% -28.31%
Detroit -0.54% 5.36% 3.65% 0.49% -18.85%
Dallas -0.57% 0.54% -0.81% -3.39% -4.52%
Miami -0.65% 0.27% -3.99% -6.59% -21.76%
Chicago -0.76% 2.49% -5.03% -10.32% -19.85%
San Diego -0.77% -0.86% -5.36% -0.67% -6.34%
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1-months 3-months 1-year 2-years 3-years
earlier earlier earlier earlier earlier
============================================================
Boston -0.77% -0.05% -1.20% -0.79% -4.09%
Denver -0.81% -0.42% -1.48% -3.09% -4.21%
Los Angeles -0.81% -0.98% -4.20% -0.02% -8.96%
Charlotte -0.88% -1.09% -2.57% -6.18% -13.78%
Minneapolis -0.88% 2.14% -7.35% -8.46% -18.54%
Seattle -1.09% -1.36% -6.53% -8.96% -21.54%
Cleveland -1.24% -0.12% -3.08% -4.89% -8.46%
Las Vegas -1.45% -1.95% -7.29% -10.51% -36.13%
San Francisco -1.46% -1.25% -5.88% -0.70% -8.46%
Tampa -1.53% -0.83% -6.69% -10.66% -25.62%
Atlanta -5.93% -7.99% -9.78% -13.72% -21.77%
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NOTE: The S&P/Case-Shiller (R) Home Price Indices are
constructed from data on sales of individual properties. With
this method, changes in the index are derived only from actual
changes in selling prices of individual properties.
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