You might find some analysts looking for some green shoots in the just released Case-Shiller Home Price Index.  For instance, the year-on-year change in house prices showed a slower decline in the latest month (February) than in the previous release.
So, this report is better for homeowners than the last one which I surveyed in a [...]

House prices increased in March in the U.K. according to Nationwide Building Society. Below is what Nationwide’s Chief Economist Fionnuala Earley had to say about this surprise good news:
“Spring brought a surprise bounce to house prices in March. The price of a typical house increased for the first time since October 2007, rising by [...]

You might have thought house price declines were slowing. I certainly had hoped so. The latest data from January 2009 from the S&P/Case-Shiller index suggests this is wishful thinking as year-on-year declines hit another record of 19%. The decline was not only steep, but very broad-based.
Data through January 2009, released today by [...]

Make no bones about it, Manhattan real estate prices have been in an extreme bubble.  With stock prices down and Wall Street shedding jobs massively, this has come to an end.
With sales prices of Manhattan apartments having tumbled by perhaps a quarter in just the past few months, pinpointing the bottom has become a [...]

The Nationwide has released its latest house price survey, showing a very large 1.8% fall in British house prices between January and February 2009. This brings the yearly decline to a record 17.6%.

Yet, incongruously, the Nationwide revealed this information on its website under the heading “improving affordability helps new and existing buyers.” If this does not smack of cheerleading, I don’t know what does.

This comes from S&P’s website (pdf):
Data through December 2008, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that the prices of existing single family homes across the United States continue to set record declines, a trend that prevailed throughout all of 2007 and [...]

This week’s Barron’s magazine highlights the abysmal state of the Manhattan real estate market. Manhattan was one of the last bubble markets to burst. Now, things are unraveling quickly, particularly at the high end. Some experts see another 30% down before the carnage is over. The trigger for the bubble’s bursting came in the form of Lehman Brothers, making the NY real estate market another reminder of how badly the Lehman situation was handled by Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner.

The monthly Nationwide Building Society survey is out for house prices in the U.K. The data show an annual fall that is the steepest on record at 16.6%. This means that house prices are now falling more rapidly than ever in the U.K. and that spells bad news as its economy has just entered recession.

Bill Gross, the founder of PIMCO and manager of the world’s largest bond fund, has just released his most recent Economic Outlook. In it, he takes a tack regarding the fix to the present turmoil in the markets with which I disagree. However, I would like to draw your attention to his analysis as his voice carries weight in the market place.

In November, the U.S. federal agencies which oversee the banking system proposed new guidelines for real estate appraisals. One would imagine that these guidelines would be in keeping with the new more stringent regulatory frame of mind the financial services sector. This is not the case.

In fact, the new proposal appears to entirely eliminate mandated written appraisals in connection with cramdowns and refis.