Seattle home prices up a tad in Q4, says report
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Across the country, Americans saw home prices drop precipitously in the fourth quarter, but in Seattle, that wasn’t the case.
Seattle was one of only three U.S. markets where home prices increased in the latest quarter, according to data released by Standard & Poor’s. Only Charlotte, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle showed year-over-year increases in prices. Seattle’s growth was the slightest, at .5 of a percent, followed by Portland, at 1.2 percent, and Charlotte, at 2.3 percent.
South Florida home prices plunged. Home prices in the Miami metropolitan area dropped 17.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, the biggest decline in the country, according to Standard & Poor’s.
Las Vegas and Phoenix were right behind, with a 15.3 percent year-over-year decline. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Detroit and Washington, D.C., all posted declines in the double digits.
Nationwide, home prices had fallen 8.9 percent by Dec. 31, ending a full year of declining prices.
The S&P/Case-Shiller quarterly index tracks the prices of existing single-family homes nationwide compared to a year earlier.
“We reached a somber year-end for the housing market in 2007,” said economist Robert Shiller, a creator of the report. “Home prices across the nation and in most metro areas are significantly lower than where they were a year ago. Wherever you look, things look bleak, with 17 of the 20 metro areas reporting annual declines and the remaining three reporting flat or moderate growth rates.”