US home values fell 6.1 percent in October from a year earlier. In Boston, the decline was 3.6 percent year-to-year, and 0.8 percent in one month.
(Associated Press)
WASHINGTON - Single-family home prices in 20 US metropolitan areas, including Boston, fell from September to October by the most in at least six years, raising the risk that more Americans will walk away from properties that are worth less than they owe.
And values fell a greater-than-forecast 6.1 percent from October 2006, the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index showed yesterday.
Prices will continue falling as record foreclosures put even more homes on the market.
"You are likely to see more people giving up on their loans as they end up with little or no equity in their homes," said Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York.
Compared with a month earlier, home prices dropped 1.4 percent. The figures aren't seasonally adjusted, so economists prefer to focus on the year-over-year change. The median forecast of 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 5.7 percent decline. The index fell 4.9 percent in the 12 months ended in September.
Seventeen of the 20 cities in the S&P/Case-Shiller index showed a year-over-year decline in prices, led by 12 percent slumps in Miami and Tampa in Florida. Three cities, Charlotte, N.C., Seattle, and Portland, Ore., showed an increase. In the Boston area, prices were down 3.6 percent over one year.
All 20 areas covered showed a drop in prices compared with September.
"There is no silver lining" in the report, said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor's. "If you look across the cities, more often than not, the bigger the run-up, the more it comes down. There is no clear sign of a bottom in these numbers."
Robert Shiller, a professor at Yale University, and Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College, created the home-price index.
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