Home-price index rises, but slips here

After a plunge lasting three years, houses have finally become cheap enough to lure buyers. That, in turn, is stabilizing prices, generating hope that the real-estate market is beginning to recover.

Eight cities, including Chicago, Cleveland, Denver and San Francisco, showed price increases in May, up from four in April and one in March, according to data released Tuesday. Two other cities, Charlotte, N.C., and New York, were flat.

Meanwhile, prices of existing homes in the Seattle area fell 0.3 percent in May after a 0.2 percent increase in April, the area's first monthly increase in a year.

For the first time since early 2007, a composite index of 20 major cities was virtually flat, instead of down.

"We've found the bottom," said Mark Fleming, chief economist for data firm First American CoreLogic.

The release of the surprisingly strong Case-Shiller Price Index, compiled by Standard & Poor's, comes after earlier reports that sales of existing homes rose last month for the third consecutive time, while beleaguered homebuilders saw sales of new homes jump in June by the largest amount in eight years.

All of these improvements are tentative, and come after a relentless decline that knocked more than half the value off houses in the worst-hit cities.

Some skeptics believe the market is merely pausing before it resumes falling. Even the most enthusiastic analysts acknowledge that rising unemployment, another leap in foreclosures or a significant rise in interest rates could snuff out progress.

Still, hope is growing in some quarters that the worst has passed.

"Recession is over, economy is recovering — let's look forward and stop the backward-looking focus," John E. Silvia, the Wells Fargo chief economist, wrote Tuesday in a research note.

Kirit Shah decided to look forward a few weeks ago. A retired forensic chemist for the New York Police Department, he closed on a house in Royal Palm Beach, Fla.

Shah was not dissuaded when the salesman at K. Hovanian Homes told him the five-bedroom place had been empty since it was finished three years ago.

"It was waiting for me," said Shah, 64. "I'm on a lakefront. I never dreamed I would be on a lakefront. I'm within walking distance of a swimming pool."

But the thing he likes best is this: He paid $260,000 for the five-bedroom house, half of what that model was fetching during the boom. "An excellent deal," he said. "Plus I got a good rate on my mortgage, under 5 percent."

Turning markets are full of uncertainty. If Shah was one reason why new-home sales rose 11 percent in June from May, it is unclear just how many others like him are out there.

Brad Hunter, chief economist for research firm Metrostudy, said the new home numbers appeared to illustrate less a return of buyers like Shah and more a resurgence of investors and speculators.

Metrostudy's own data showed that the number of buyers during the second quarter who actually moved into their new house declined 2.6 percent.

"Investors are turning right around and putting the houses on the market for sale or for rent," Hunter said. "What appears to have been an absorption of excess inventory can be just a changing of ownership of that inventory."

The good news in the index, the most widely watched source of price information about the housing market, is equally provisionary.

Tracking only large urban areas, the monthly index does not represent the country as a whole.

The latest numbers showed that May prices were down 17.1 compared with May of the previous year and are back to mid-2003 levels. As bad as that may sound, it was the fourth consecutive month that price declines slowed — a step in the right direction, but perhaps not cause for widespread celebration.

More attention was focused on the news that, when May was compared with April, the price index covering 20 major cities showed a half-percent gain. It was the first month-over-month increase in the 20-city index in 34 months.

Seattle prices have slid 22.5 percent since it peaked in July 2007 — seven months or more after most of the other 19 cities hit their zeniths — and are back to May 2005 price levels.

"It is very possible that years from now, we will say that April 2009 was the trough in home prices," said Maureen Maitland, vice president for index services at Standard & Poor's.

When the numbers were adjusted for seasonal factors, however, the usual way housing figures are presented, the slight gain disappeared and the 20-city index was essentially flat. Half of the cities showed continued declines.

One reason the market is perking up in some places, real-estate agents say, is because of the encouragement offered by such measures as the first-time buyer's tax credit of $8,000.

Another reason is the prevalence of foreclosures, which make up about a third of all existing home sales.

In some troubled regions, agents say they cannot remember the last transaction that did not involve a bank disposing of a property.

These communities are not yet showing any improvement in prices. Las Vegas was the worst-performing city in the index, falling 2.6 percent. Prices have fallen there by a third in the last year.

The Obama administration has been seeking to stabilize the market in part by slowing the pace of foreclosures. Representatives from 25 leading mortgage servicers met with administration officials Tuesday and promised to pick up the pace of loan modifications.

If that does not happen and there is another flood of foreclosures, Las Vegas may become the rule rather than the exception.

Andrew LePage, who analyzes California and other markets for research firm DataQuick, said such a scenario is possible. "The dark clouds are still there," he said.

All this uncertainty breeds a hesitancy that seems to show up in nearly every sale, especially at the higher end of the market.

Seattle Times business reporter Eric Pryne contributed to this report.