Slide in home prices shows no slowdown

U.S. home prices showed no signs they've hit bottom, according to a national index released Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index showed a record 19.1 percent drop for the first three months of this year.

Home prices in Seattle fell 2 percent in March, bringing the 12-month drop to 16.4 percent. Both the monthly and yearly declines were a bit better than the average of the 20 cities in the Case-Shiller index.

Seattle's year-over-year decline was the ninth-smallest among the 20 cities. Phoenix had the biggest 12-month drop, 36 percent; Denver, with a 5.5 percent decline, had the smallest.

Since metro-area home prices peaked in July 2007, according to the Case-Shiller data, Seattle prices have fallen 22.5 percent.

That compares with a 32.2 percent decline in the 20-city composite index since its peak in July 2006.

"We continue to believe that it is unlikely that we are anywhere near a bottom in nationwide home prices," according to Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist for consulting firm MFR.

Ten metro areas were reported more than 30 percent down from the peak-price level, with Phoenix's 53 percent decline in March from its peak.

Dallas, where prices did not inflate to the same degree during the housing bubble as metro areas in California, Arizona and Nevada, recorded the smallest decline from its peak, 11 percent.

Auction sales of foreclosed homes are depressing home prices and extending the four-year property slump, said Karl Case, co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index.

"The single-family home market by and large continues its drift," Case, a Wellesley College economics professor, said Tuesday on Bloomberg Radio.

Case and Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets and a professor at Yale University, created the home-price index based on research from the 1980s.

The Case-Shiller index uses an index score rather than a dollar figure to state home-price levels.

It compares sales of specific homes to their previous sales and compensates for changes to the property such as remodeling.

An index score of 100 reflects January 2000 pricing.

Seattle Times business reporter Drew DeSilver contributed to this report. Material from the Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News also was used.