A CNNMoney.com report, “Home prices in record drop,” posted a scary map labeled “Falling Homes Sales.” But it actually shows falling home prices. Within the S&P Case-Shiller sample of 20 metropolitan areas, the steepest drop in prices (not sales) were in Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tampa and Detroit.
All 7 of those metropolitan areas (7 out of 20 in that index) lie within 5 states with by far the worst mortgage problems, as shown in my February 21 article, “The Foreclosure Five.” Yet I also showed that states with the steepest price declines also have had huge increases in home sales, which makes the label on the CNNMoney map doubly misleading.
My article used third quarter house prices because fourth quarter figures were not yet available. That turns out to make even less difference than I expected.
The fourth quarter Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) figures show home prices down 21.8% for the year in Nevada, 20.5% in California, 15.2% in Arizona, 19.5% in Florida, and 11.8% in Michigan. Prices were down 3.7% in the median state, North Carolina, but up 21.6% over five years. That means prices fell by less than 3.7% last year in 24 states— including a half dozen states with home prices up a bit, and New York with only a 3.3% decline.
CNNMoney says, “The decline does not seem to be slowing — just the opposite. The average home price dropped 2.5% between November and December in the 20 top metro areas.” The FHFA data for all 50 states, by contrast, show a small 0.1% increase in home prices between November and December.
The article goes on say, “The S&P Case-Shiller National Home Price Index reported that prices sank a record 18.2% during the last three months of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007. Case-Shiller’s index of 20 major metropolitan areas fell 18.5%, also a record.” The FHFA, by contrast, shows that prices fell just 8.2% during the last three months of 2008, or 3.7% if using a median average. Ten percentage points is quite a wide gap.
What accounts for such huge differences between Case-Shiller and federal price indexes? CNNMoney imagines it’s because “Homes purchased without financing or ones too expensive to qualify for a Fannie-Freddie loan are not counted in the FFHA (sic) statistics.” That’s more than unlikely. The inclusion of cash sales and jumbo loans (larger than $729,750 in pricey area) can’t possibly explain why price declines in the Case-Shiller index look so much more dramatic those in the OFHEO/FHFA index.
The real reason is simple: Case-Shiller indexes are hugely dominated by the Foreclosure Five. In the Case-Shiller index of only 20 “top” metro areas, the Foreclosure Five account for 41.2% of that value-weighted index with California alone accounting for 27.4%.
The “national” Case-Shiller index totally excludes 13 states, such as Indiana and South Carolina, and samples only a fraction of many others. The Foreclosure Five account for 28.3% of that “national” index, with California amounting to 17.1%.
As is true of nearly all reprorting about foreclosures, underwater mortgages and falling house prices, what the Case-Shiller price index really shows is that many people are confusing what has been happening in the Foreclosure Five with what has been happening in the nation as a whole.
