Housing Crash 2.0 Is Accelerating

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeHouse prices are falling again—and the decline is accelerating. Today’s big housing numbers comes from the Case-Shiller home price indexes. The indexes, which measure how prices have changed over the previous three months, show prices falling in every major metropolitan area (except, weirdly, Detroit). The 20-city average declined 3.3 percent from a year ago, and 1.1 percent from the previous three-month average.

This is the seventh successive month of widespread price declines. The housing recovery began to stall last spring, after the government’s home-buyer tax credit expired. The three-month moving average of the Case-Shiller 20-city index showed that gains in home pricing slowing to a crawl in early summer and actually reversing in July and August. By September, it was clear that home prices were going into a serious decline.

The November numbers (which are actually the three-month average of September, October and November) showed a 1 percent decline over the previous month. Prices kept dropping by 1 percent in December and January. February’s data shows that the decline is actually accelerating a bit. This is the opposite of a recovery—it’s a crash building steam. More...