Northwest's leading metro area housing prices in slump

            Portland and Seattle are lagging the rest of the country in one of the most widely-followed indexes of housing prices for metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).

            The S&P/Case-Schiller index report released this week shows that among 20 metro areas the Northwest’s leading cities have experienced the largest one-year decline in comparable February home prices.

            Portland prices sank by 7.0% while Seattle was down 7.5%, putting them among the worst national markets year-to-year.

            Phoenix led the nation in February to February declines, at 8.4%, followed by Minneapolis, 8.3%, and Chicago, 7.6%.

            Half of the 20 MSAs, including Seattle and Portland, experienced third consecutive monthly lows. The others were Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Phoenix and Tampa.

            Atlanta, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Detroit all had home prices below their 2000 levels while Phoenix was barely above its January 2000 number.

The 20-city composite index was off 3.3% from February of 2010 to 139.26, which was nearly dead even with the April of 2009 bottom value of 139.26, indicating housing prices are in a “double-dip” nationally.           

            Only the Washington, DC market notched a yearly gain—up 2.7%. The nation’s capital also had the largest 11 year gain of  81.33% since the base for the index of January 2000.

 However, in putting the currently dismal market in perspective, Case-Shiller noted there have been large gains in housing prices over the past 11 years in cities that have performed poorly of late, citing Los Angeles, up 68.25%, New York, 65.19%, and San Diego, 55.05%.     

            The Case-Shiller index  is a weighted value pegged to January of 2000 prices. For example, Portland’s index as of February was 133.66, or up 33.66% since 2000, and Seattle’s 132.85, which was 32.85% higher. Calculating the 11-year performance, Portland's housing prices gained 2.67% annually over the period and Seattle 2.62%.

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