Metro Home Sales Report Shows Big Drops in California Real Estate

The NAR metropolitan home sales report for Q1 came out this morning, and showed some nasty declines. For the most part, falling home prices accelerated sharply in the first quarter, with California getting hit particularly hard.

Overall, for the U.S. as a whole, Q1 home prices fell -7.7% from year ago levels. But as California had held up better than most markets for a while, those cities now look like they are playing catch-up on the downside.

Here are some of the cities showing the largest declines:

• -29.2%: Sacramento, CA
• -27.7%: Riverside/San Bernadino, CA
• -22.9%: San Diego, CA
• -22.2%: Sarasota, FL
• -21.3%: Los Angeles, CA
• -20.7%: Grand Rapids, MI
• -20.2%: Las Vegas
• -18.5%: Memphis, TN
• -17.2%: Miami, FL
• -17.0%: Ft. Myers, FL
• -16.9%: Cleveland, OH (Go Cavs!)
• -15.4: Phoenix, AZ

There were few cities showing big increases, but here are a few showing gains:

• +11.8%: Binghamton, NY
• +10.4%: Peoria, IL
• +10.1%: Spartanburg, SC
• +9.0%: Yakima, WA
• +6.3%: Farmington, NM
• +3.5%: Salt Lake City, UT

And here are how some other notable large cities are faring:

• -13.1%: Washington, DC
• -9.6%: Atlanta, GA
• -7.8%: Boston, MA
• -6.6%: Chicago, IL
• -6.1%: San Francisco, CA
• -3.9%: New York, NY
• -2.1%: Dallas, TX

While I think that the pace of the declines has seen its worst levels, I still do not have the sense that real estate markets overall have bottomed. I think the fact that credit remains hard to obtain has made the pool of buyers permanently lower. I also think there are many sellers that remain unwilling to lower their prices.

Unlike stock markets, real estate markets often form long and shallow bottoms that take years to take shape. As such, I think it will be many years before we see the highs in residential real estate values that peaked around 2006.