The US housing double-dip — it’s official:
Data through March 2011, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that the U.S. National Home Price Index declined by 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011, after having fallen 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2010. The National Index hit a new recession low with the first quarter’s data and posted an annual decline of 5.1% versus the first quarter of 2010. Nationally, home prices are back to their mid-2002 levels.
That’s the first-quarter tally after prices fell 3.6 per cent in March.
As we’ve explained in the past, the monthly Case-Shiller numbers operate on a lag, and recently there’s been some debate about whether other, more timely measures of housing are painting a more optimistic picture.
Citi analysts pointed to figures from Radar Logic and Altos showing that housing prices had just started climbing again in March and April. But those assessments were contradicted earlier in the month by CoreLogic, which also had shown a double-dip through April.
Each of these measures uses a different methodology, and maybe the situation is more nuanced than the Case-Shiller numbers would suggest. Maybe.
Regardless, you can toss this onto the growing pile of disappointing second-quarter indicators.
Related links:
Are US house prices not falling after all? – FT Alphaville
S&P: yeah, housing is still terrible – FT Alphaville