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WORLD> America
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US home price index posts largest ever drop
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-23 22:55 WASHINGTON -- A home-price index considered to be the most comprehensive reading of the US market posted the sharpest decline in its 17-year history, and analysts say housing has yet to bottom out.
Rapidly falling home prices in California, Florida and Nevada skewed the national results. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said Thursday that home prices fell 3.1 percent in the first quarter compared with last year. It was only the second quarter of price declines since the index started in 1991. The price index first declined on a year-over-year basis in the final quarter of 2007, when it dropped 0.45 percent. Another widely followed reading, the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index, has shown larger declines for major US metropolitan areas. But analysts say the government index provides a more comprehensive reading of nationwide housing market. That's particularly true for midwestern states, where prices never skyrocketed and have been less affected by the real estate downturn. "Most people don't live in a Miami condo," said Michael Englund, chief economist with Action Economics in Boulder, Colo. |
