Shiller Chills and Get Positive
July 29, 2009 by admin
Filed under Real Estate Articles
Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index shows that prices are actually starting to rise again in some parts of the country. Cities like Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Minneapolis and San Francisco all have home prices on the rise.
“This is the first time in almost three years that we’ve seen price increases,” says Yale University professor Robert Shiller, who helped design the home price index. “So when we see a break in the downward trend that’s definitely encouraging news.”
“Well, I think the worst is probably behind us — the worst pace of decline,” he says. “We were going down at 2 percent a month for a number of months in a row nationally. That was really something. Now home prices relative to rents or construction costs are back at normal levels.”
Many Realtors are seeing multiple offers making some speculate that we have reached a housing bottom.
“Well, I think it very much depends on what city you’re in,” says William Wheaton, a housing economist at MIT. “There are really two types of markets right now.”
Wheaton notes that in states with 50% drops like Arizona, California and Florida that indeed we may be at a bottom.
“If you’re in a market like California, where prices have fallen 50 percent and transactions have picked up and you ask your friendly professor ‘Is this the bottom?’ I would say pretty much so,” Wheaton says.” If you could buy a house [for] 50 percent of what you could a few years ago, I’d say go ahead and buy it.”
Source: NPR
