A closely watched gauge of U.S. home prices, the S&P Case-Shiller home-price index, showed accelerating price declines in November. Home values in 20 major U.S. cities fell a record 18.2 percent in the 12 months ending in November. No city experienced year-over-year price gains, the eighth straight month that has happened.
The Case-Shiller 20-city home price index fell 2.2 percent in November, with home values in all 20 cities falling at least 1 percent. None of the cities managed to avoid month-to-month declines for the second month in a row.
Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco continued to lead decliners, all with year-to-year drops over 30 percent and monthly drops over 3 percent. The best performance over the past year was Dallas, where prices fell just 3.3 percent.
Prices are down 25 percent from the peak in mid-2006, according to Case-Shiller.
The Case-Shiller index tracks repeat sales on the same properties over time, but it closely tracks only 20 cities, not the whole country.
Falling home values have caused plunge in value mortgage-backed securities and created chaos in the global financial system. Home owners have lost trillions of dollars of wealth and banks have been stuck with mortgage-backed securities as they turned into toxic assets.
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