The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America, January Update: Now Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego Plunge Fastest
This takes some doing: San Francisco Bay Area house prices plunged faster from the peak than they’d spiked to the peak.
Housing Bubble 2 continues to deflate relentlessly, no matter what data set we’re looking at. Today we got the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index for “November,” which is a three-month moving average of home sales that were entered into public records in September, October, and November, reflecting deals made largely in August through October.
Prices in all of the 20 metros in the index dropped from the prior month, and all continued their slide from the peak last spring or summer.
The San Francisco Bay Area is the leader here. The index for single-family houses was down 14% from the peak in May and turned negative year-over-year, having plunged faster in the six months since the peak in May than they’d spiked in the six months up through May.
The Case-Shiller Index is different from the median-price indices. It uses the “sales pairs” method, comparing sales in the current month to when the same houses sold previously. The price changes are weighted based on how long ago the prior sale occurred, and adjustments are made for home improvements and other factors (methodology). This “sales pairs” method makes the Case-Shiller index a more reliable indicator than median price indices, but it lags months behind.
Median-price indices reflect the price in the middle of all homes that sold that month, and can therefore be skewed by a change in the mix of homes that are sold, which is a big issue when there is a dramatic change in the market, such as in 2022. But they’re more current.
And the median price indices have plunged a whole lot further. The median price across the US of all types of homes sold in December fell 11.3% from the peak in June, according to the National Association of Realtors, while today’s National Case-Shiller Index (three-month moving average through November), dropped only 3.6% from the peak.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the median price plunged by 30% in December from the crazy peak in March, and was down 10% year-over-year. The Case-Shiller Index for the Bay Area today (reflecting home sales in September, October, and November) was down 14.4% from the peak, and was down 1.6% year-over-year.
On a month-to-month basis, today’s Case-Shiller Index dropped again in all 20 metros that it covers. The biggest month-to-month drops occurred in:
- Phoenix: -1.9%
- Las Vegas: -1.7%
- San Francisco: -1.6%
- Seattle: -1.5%
- San Diego: -1.4%
- Dallas: -1.1%
- Tampa: -1.0%
From their peaks, which range from May to July, house prices dropped the most in:
- San Francisco Bay Area: -14.3%
- Seattle metro: -13.5%
- San Diego metro: -9.9%
- Phoenix metro: -7.7%
- Denver metro: -7.5%
- Los Angeles metro: -7.4%
- Las Vegas metro: -7.0%.
- Dallas metro: -6.6%
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