The Roof Over Your Head, Formerly Known as Piggy Bank

NEW HOME PRICE DATA

The Case-Shiller home price indexes came out today, for period ending September.

There is not an accelerating decline overall, but the slip did broaden in the month, as a few more cities in the composite showed a fall than had earlier (in fact, all 20 of them fell in the period for the first time, some just slightly).

NO ACCELERATION, YET

Among the major markets, New York, Boston, and Washington, their was a decline in the rate of fall. San Francisco, which has been moving down very slowly, showed a downtick. Chicago did as well, but that market did not have nearly as much a run-up as did the other majors. Last month's sharp figure for Los Angeles did not repeat.

Phoenix, which is not a large part of the overall national market, put in a pretty bad number, if there is follow-through on it. A retirement destination, this has been one of the hot markets in the past fifteen years.

I don't have the geographical patterns of mortgage delinquencies (or defaults) and sub-prime lending. The notion that foreclosures are going to greatly accelerate the home-price decline is not in the national numbers, right now.

PARTS OF THE MARKET HIT FOR DIFFERENT REASONS, SO FAR

Markets like Miami, Tampa, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, that have had the largest run-ups, might be vulnerable to forced selling (foreclosure). Other markets, in the so-called non-coastal areas, might be subject just to the general credit and economic woes of working out the exuberant lending practices of the Bush era.

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