San Diego County home prices fell again in October, demonstrating a 27 percent decline compared to the same month in 2007 and a 36 percent drop from the market peak in November 2005, according to the most recent Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index, released this morning.
The lowest tier, detached houses priced less than $317,768, fell by 32.7 percent compared to October 2007. Prices in that tier were down a staggering 45.8 percent compared to the tier’s peak in June 2006.
The middle tier, homes priced between $317,768 and $469,174, dropped by 24.5 percent year-over-year and by 35.8 percent from the tier’s peak in November 2005.
And the highest tier, homes priced higher than $469,174, fell by 19 percent year-over-year and by 28.1 percent from the peak.
The Case-Shiller index economists track the sales of detached single-family houses that have sold before in a rolling three month period, contrast them with the price the same house sold for previously, and report the difference as part of the index.
The index assigned a value of 100 to the region’s home prices in the year 2000, and has tracked the ups and downs in the market compared to that value ever since. The peak of the market in November 2005 was a reading of 250.34 on the index, meaning prices had ascended by 150 percent in less than six years.
This most recent index for October shows a reading of 159.12, a decline of 36.4 percent from the peak. Still, the index shows prices to be about 59 percent higher than they were at the start of the decade.
We’ll have some more on these data later today. And I already got some good responses to last night’s post about selling in this market, so I’ll have those for you later, too.