Flawed Home Price Data

There's been a lot of talk—quite understandably so—about the picture being painted by national and local data on housing prices in recent months. For potential home sellers, the numbers haven't been pretty.

Numbers from the National Association of Realtors showed a March median sales price decline of 7.7 percent from a year ago. The Standard and Poor's Case-Schiller Index shows a 12.7 percent drop in their composite of the nation's twenty largest metropolitan areas. In our own market, we're showing a 9.7 percent decline in median sales price when comparing March 2008 to March 2007.

But there's an inherent trouble in accepting broad, metro-wide median sales price numbers as some sort of gospel truth about general home price appreciation. Housing markets are not homogeneous. Within each metro area there's a cornucopia of different property varieties. Location, price range, construction status, condition and—yes—foreclosure status all affect housing values on a case-by-case basis. So these median price numbers have to be approached with a critical eye.

This caution is especially crucial in a time like today, when our national housing market is in the midst of a fairly unique point in its history. Foreclosures and short sales—often priced at extreme discounts to spur sales—are comprising a much larger portion of our markets than they have in previous years, rendering the traditional methods employed by NAR, Case-Schiller and ourselves a bit skewed.

Even NAR and Case-Schiller are now publicly acknowledging these flaws. Click here for a MarketWatch piece on the subject.

Hmmm...if only we had a way to separate foreclosures and short sales from non-bank-mediated properties in the data. Then we could really get a feel for current market conditions.

A subtle hint: keep an eye on us in the next week.

Hat-tip to Pat Paulson for pointing out the MarketWatch article to us.

Comments

[Aaron Dickinson - Edina Realty]

LOL you big tease Jeff. :-)