Home prices continued to fall during the fourth quarter, with more than three-quarters of the zip codes covered by First American CoreLogic’s LoanPerformance Home Price Index (HPI) showing declines from the third quarter.
“Of the 7,472 ZIP codes tracked by the LoanPerformance HPI, home prices in 5,691 (76.16 percent) of these ZIP codes have decreased over the last three months,” said Damien Weldon, vice president, collateral and prepayment analytics for First American CoreLogic, in a statement.
Despite the dismal fourth quarter, the annualized trend was found to be a bit more moderate, with only about half the zip codes studied showing a decrease in value.
“Year-over-year, however, just 4,028 (53.91 percent) of the ZIP codes we track indicate decreasing property values,” added Weldon.
As expected, continued weakness was found in states like California, Florida, Nevada, and Ohio.
The Cleveland, Ohio metropolitan area led the fourth quarter decline with a 7.51 percent quarterly drop in value, followed by the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA with a 6.55 percent decline, and St. Louis with a 6.52 percent tumble.
For the 12 months ended December 31, 2007, the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA metro saw home prices fall 18.18 percent, the largest decline of all areas covered.
“There continues to be strong variation across individual states. For example, according to this latest data release, 97.67% (967) of the ZIP codes we track in California exhibited negative declines year-over-year whereas in New York the comparative number is just 51.39% (240)” added Weldon.
The Honolulu, HI metro exhibited the largest annual home price increase, rising 13.81 percent over the last 12 months, despite pulling back 1.25 percent over the last quarter.
See the complete report here.
Check out the map below:
(photo: mykl roventine)
Source: thetruthaboutmortgage.com