Home-Price Declines in 20 U.S. Cities Eased in April

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Home prices in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas fell in April at a slower pace than forecast, a sign the plunge in real-estate values is abating.

The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index decreased 18.1 percent from a year earlier following an 18.7 percent drop in March. The measure declined 19 percent in January, the most since the data began in 2001.

Price declines are likely to keep moderating as demand steadies and distressed properties account for a smaller share of transactions. Still, the highest jobless rate in 25 years is contributing to record foreclosures, which are likely to keep depressing values for months to come even as home sales steady.

“It is looking a little bit better,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The largest declines are probably past. When prices stop falling the erosion in household wealth will come to an end.”

Economists forecast the index would drop 18.6 percent, according to the estimates of 33 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Estimates ranged from drops of 17.7 percent to 19.4 percent.

Stock futures extended gains following the report. The contract on the S&P 500 index was up 0.2 percent at 9:19 a.m. in New York.

The home-price index figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal effects so economists prefer to focus on year-over-year changes instead of month-to-month.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aufFvZoxcQ6g

I thought, we will spiral downward into real estate prices abyss...

 

This article has a headline that only Goebbel's could love.

Prices fell 18%, and it pronounces moderating decline?

Vullshit.


It's getting worse.


Just like the jobs - we had that blip of 'only' 300k jobs lost the one month, and then - boom....back up to over 630k again.


Green shoots?

Green shits.

Today's shits:

•Consumer Confidence in U.S. Unexpectedly Drops, Reflecting Weak Job Market

•Stocks in U.S. Fall on Mortgage Delinquencies, Consumer Confidence Slump


•U.K. Economy Shrinks More Than Estimated in Biggest Contraction Since 1958

 

There has been a noticeable abuse of terms and numbers lately. A smaller rate of decrease is now as good as an increase, and the use of percentages is decieving because percentages don't commute. In other words a 30% drop followed by a 30% gain does not get you back to the starting point, but the latter is used in a way that implies such.

 

Doesn´t matter. Floor in real estate prices is in the working according to Shiller and Case.


June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Home prices saw a “striking improvement in the rate of decline” in April and trading in funds launched today indicates investors believe the U.S. housing slump is nearing a bottom, said Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

“At this point, people are thinking the fall is over,” Shiller, co-founder of the home price index that bears his name, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview today. “The market is predicting the declines are over.”

Home prices in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas fell in April at a slower pace than forecast, the S&P/Case-Shiller home- price index showed today.

The index decreased 18.1 percent from a year earlier following an 18.7 percent drop in March. Economists predicted the index would drop 18.6 percent, according to the median of 33 responses in a survey conducted by Bloomberg. The measure fell 19 percent in January, the most since the data began in 2001.

“These numbers are really showing that there’s been a change in mood,” said Karl Case, a professor at Wellesley University and another co-founder of the index. “For these numbers to go up in eight states, I was quite taken aback.”

Home prices rose in eight of the cities measured on a monthly basis. Led by Dallas, where home values rose 1.74 percent from the previous month, prices also gained in Denver, Cleveland, the District of Columbia, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta and Seattle.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTz.RbR1robw

 

+1

Exactly.

 

I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything remotely close to "a STRIKING IMPROVEMENT in the rate of decline". Since when is an 18.1% drop a "striking improvement" when the all time largest drop is 19%?

Who the F writes this nonsense?

 

+1

Exactly.

 

Have to agree. I mean, we all know the media never gets anything written right. This is pure Economical Yellow Journalism.

Striking improvement - LOL

 

The "Ministry of Truth" is pulling out all the stops and we spiral towards Orwell's 'controlled insanity". Can anyone deny we're living out Orwell's novel?
According to the novel, doublethink is:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary."
Doublethink is a form of trained, willful intellectual blindness to contradictions in a belief system. Doublethink differs from ordinary hypocrisy in that the "doublethinking" person deliberately had to forget the contradiction between his two opposing beliefs — and then deliberately forget that he had forgotten the contradiction. He then had to forget the forgetting of the forgetting, and so on; this intentional forgetting, once begun, continues indefinitely.