I have yet to read what the media has reported on the new Case-Shiller Housing Index numbers for November 2008. However, I have crunched the numbers and they do not look very good.

For the Composite-20 list of cities, the index is down 18.2% in the past year, putting it down 25.1% from its peak. The Composite-10 list shows a fall of 19.1% and 26.6% for the same time frames. This puts prices back to levels last seen in February 2004.

The data are in for house prices in the United Kingdom and they are not good. Prices have now fallen 18% from their peak in October 2007 according to the latest Nationwide Building Society survey. They were down a massive 2.5% in December 2008 alone. If you recall, I said November’s survey showed that prices had dropped 13.9% in the year to November, with the losses in December, this number has accelerated to 15.9%- one reason I predicted the United Kingdom will suffer a wave of defaults in the coming year.

If you are wondering why the U.S. housing market is a mess, watch this video about a $103,000 mortgage that was used to finance a shack –literally, a shack. Of course, the mortgage was packaged with a bunch of others into a mortgage backed security, which was rated AAA.

This scenario sums up the mess that was the U.S. housing market pretty nicely.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index for U.S. housing came out today. It was a pretty nasty little report. It showed a clear acceleration in home price declines for the month of October, the latest month for which data is available. In the Composite-10, prices are a full 18.6% lower than they were last October. While I have believed the pace of house price declines was slowing, this report pours cold water on that thesis. The report also suggests that house prices will be a major concern for the incoming Obama Administration.

It’s interesting to hear a chief executive of a major Wall Street firm speak openly and on the record about the economy. So, it’s refreshing to watch this video and see Jamie Dimon’s take on a number of economic issues ncluding house prices and infrastructure spending.

A few days ago, I showed you a video from a long session he did with Erin Burnett of CNBC. This is another segment of that session. On the whole, he sounds very reasonable. Take a look.

Jamie Dimon on the Economy

Today the Nationwide released their monthly UK-wide figures on house prices and the numbers were better. House prices fell 0.4% in the last month, bringing the annual fall to 13.9%, down from 14.6% in October.

Nevertheless, this is the 13th month in a row that house prices have fallen in the UK. Obviously, the UK is poised to have a sharp property fall that is worse than in the early 1990s.

The S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices were released yesterday. Unfortunately, I was away all day and could not post. The indices showed a further decline in home prices in the United States through September 2008 (the data most recently available). In the year to September, prices dropped 17.4% for the Composite-10 index and 18.6% for the [...]

Canada has been one of the last housing bubble markets to crack. But, crack it has. The Toronto Real Estate Board reported that house prices crashed 13% from $434,022 on average last October to $376,896 this past October. With job losses mounting on Bay Street in Toronto as the financial services sector contracts [...]

The rate of decline in house prices in the UK is accelerating. Today the Nationwide released their monthly UK-wide figures on house prices and the numbers were fairly grim. House prices fell 1.4% in the last month alone, bringing the annual fall to 14.6% or nearly 20% in inflation-adjusted terms.
This is the 12th month [...]

I have run several stories in the past about Canada’s housing bubble because I have visited a number of Canadian cities over the past few years and all of them seemed to be building like mad. Vancouver and Toronto were the worst of the lot as far as condos go. But, as the [...]