October Home Prices Suffer Record Drops

A national home price gauge released today showed that prices of existing single-family homes recorded their biggest annual drop in October.

Experts say that this drop shows that the housing slump is far from over.  The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller year-over-year index of 10 metropolitan areas fell to 209.68 in October, down 6.7 percent from a year earlier. The decline surpassed the 6.3 percent drop in April 1991. The composite home price index on the firms newer index on 20 metropolitan areas declined to 192.89 in October, which is down 6.1 percent from a year ago.

The S&P Case-Shriller National Home Price Index was created 21 years ago and measures  housing price fluctuations on either the old method using 10 major city housing markets, or the new method of using 20 major city housing markets. The old method analyzes Boston, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Franciso, and Washington, D.C. While the newer one uses the above cities and adds Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and the Tampa Florida housing market.

To read more about US home prices post record annual drop in October head on over to Reuters.