Home prices tumbled by the sharpest annual rate ever in August, with little indication of a turnaround in sight, a closely watched housing index showed Tuesday.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city housing index dropped a record 16.6 percent from August last year, the largest drop since its inception in 2000. The 10-city index plunged 17.7 percent, its biggest decline in its 21-year history.
Recommended Stories
The indexes, which include data from cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, do not include Baltimore housing data, but the Baltimore home statistics tell a similar story.
In Baltimore City and its five surrounding counties, median sale prices — the point at which half of homes are sold for more and half for less — fell 1.8 percent in August to $275,000 from $279,900, according to data from the Realtor-owned Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.
In September, the region’s median sale price sunk another 5.4 percent to $255,000, according to the most recent MRIS data. Home values in the Baltimore area have fallen in 11 consecutive months.
While the data look bleak, it’s important to put home prices into proper perspective, said Vito Simone, president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors.
“Almost every single market in the Case-Shiller index is up substantially since 2001,” Simone said. “If you bought in 2001 for the long term, you’re still ahead in the game. You’re still light-years ahead of other investment markets since then.”
Simone also pointed to some “bright spots” in the market. Baltimore City median sale prices had increased in June, July and August before retreating 3 percent to $145,500 in September.
After a turbulent economic quarter, homeowners are staying positive. About half of U.S. homeowners still believe their home is insulated from the nation’s home value declines, according to the Zillow Third Quarter Homeowner Confidence Survey.
This quarter, 49 percent of homeowners said they think their own home’s value has increased or stayed the same over the past year.
But in reality, about 74 percent of homes have lost value in the past 12 months, according to preliminary analysis from Zillow’s Third Quarter Real Estate Market Report.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
[email protected]
Upcoming data
MRIS is scheduled to report the Baltimore region’s housing data for October on Nov. 10.
