Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Drop Most in More Than Year on Foreclosures - Bloomberg


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Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Drop Most in More Than Year on Foreclosures

By Alex Kowalski and Shobhana Chandra - Tue Apr 26 20:11:39 GMT 2011

Residential real-estate prices dropped in the 12 months to February by the most in more than a year, putting the market on the verge of eclipsing the nadir reached during the U.S. recession.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 3.3 percent from February 2010, the biggest year-over-year decline since November 2009, the group said today in New York. At 139.27, the gauge was just shy of the six-year low of 139.26 in April 2009, two months before the economic slump ended.

Values will probably keep falling as foreclosures swell the supply of unsold homes, which means the construction industry will take time to recover. Another report showed consumer confidence climbed more than forecast this month, making it more likely that spending will keep growing as the economic expansion creates jobs and stock prices advance.

“Housing will continue to lag the recovery until foreclosures abate,” said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets Inc. in Toronto. At the same time, “the negative wealth effect from home price declines seems to be more than offset by stock market gains,” and “the economy is moving in the right direction.”

Stocks rose as earnings at companies from United Parcel Service Inc. to 3M Co. topped analysts’ estimates. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased 0.9 percent to 1,347.24 at the 4 p.m. close in New York, the highest level since June 17, 2008. Treasuries also climbed, sending the yield on the benchmark 10- year note down to 3.31 percent from 3.37 percent late yesterday.

Projected Drop
The drop in home prices matched the median forecast of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Estimates ranged from declines of 2.5 percent to 4 percent.

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index rose to 65.4 from a revised 63.8 reading in March, figures from the New York-based private research group showed. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected it would advance to 64.5.

Six straight months of job growth along with joblessness at a two-year low in March are helping sustain consumer purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy. At the same time, bigger gains in sentiment may be difficult to achieve as households spend more for food and gasoline, which is at the highest level in almost three years.

“Confidence is picking up on the back of an improving labor market and rising stock prices, which are offsetting higher gasoline costs,” said BMO’s Guatieri. “Consumers will have both the confidence and the income to keep spending.”

Eighth Decrease
Home prices fell 0.2 percent in February from the prior month after adjusting for seasonal variations, an eighth consecutive decrease, the report from Case-Shiller showed. Fourteen of the 20 cities posted price declines in February from the previous month, led by Seattle and Miami.

The year-over-year gauge provides better indications of trends in prices, the group has said. The panel includes Karl Case and Robert Shiller, the economists who created the index.

The Case-Shiller measure is based on a three-month average, which means the February data was influenced by transactions in January and December.

All but one of the 20 cities in the index showed a year- over-year decline, led by an 8.4 percent slump in Phoenix and an 8.3 percent decrease in Minneapolis. The exception was Washington, where values climbed 2.7 percent. Prices in 10 markets dropped to fresh lows in February from their 2006, 2007 peaks. Those areas include Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami and New York.

Little Good News
“There is very little, if any, good news about housing,” David Blitzer, chairman of the Case-Shiller index committee at S&P, said in a statement. “The 20-city composite is within a hair’s breadth of a double-dip.”

KB Home (KBH), the Los Angeles-based homebuilder that targets first-time buyers, this month reported a bigger-than-expected loss for the quarter ended Feb. 28 as orders plunged.

“Today’s consumers remain very cautious, whether they have concerns about home prices falling further, their job status, their ability to qualify for a loan, or general confidence in the economy,” President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Mezger said during a conference call with analysts on April 5. “A sustained, broad-based housing recovery will not occur until we start to experience material job creation.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner today said it’s “going to take a long time” to fix the housing market because private sources of financing need to take a bigger part, replacing government-sponsored agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“We’re just at the beginning of trying to figure out how to fix that mess,” Geithner said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “You have to put in place a housing-finance system that will allow private capital to carry the dominant role of financing and mortgage for people.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Kowalski in Washington at akowalski13@bloomberg.net; Shobhana Chandra in Washington at schandra1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net
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La FED está haciendo QE2 pero parece que la inyección de liquidez no traspasa desde el mundo financiero a la economía real. Eso quiere decir que el mercado financiero está tapando sus agujeros (negros, a lo que se ve) con esa liquidez. ¿Se avecina nueva recesión en USA?

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Liquidity trap, or so they say, hamijo.

La Fed por medio del QE2 busca bajar las tasas hipotecarias; elevar los precios de los bonos corporativos, de las acciones en los mercados de capitales, de las mercancías básicas, en general de los activos reales y bajar el valor del dólar.

La mayor liquidez que se crea cuando el banco central compra bonos genera en un primer momento inflación en el precio de los activos reales y financieros, luego viene la inflación a secas, cuando aumenta la demanda de consumo e inversión que es lo que le falta a la economía. Hasta ahora, la Fed ha logrado crear inflación de activos en los mercados de bonos, divisas, mercancías básicas y de capitales, especialmente en los emergentes. Todavía no aparece la inflación de bienes. La Fed decidió apostar fuerte al QE2 para salir de la trampa de liquidez; El riesgo es que sólo genere nuevas burbujas en los precios de los activos financieros. Veremos.

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