You know that everyone is obsessed with home prices when the Standard and Poors servers go down at 8:00 AM on the last Tuesday of every month. That’s when the revised Case Shiller price indices come out and this server crashing has become a regular occurrence in the last few months. Last month they didn’t get stuff back online until late afternoon and I was only able to get in a few minutes ago.
For the month of January home prices in Chicago fell once again. The number reported by the mainstream media is for single family homes and indicates that prices are now down 25.8% from the peak in September of 2006 and are down 4.4% in the last year. See the blue line below. At least they are still higher than the low in April of last year. They are also now 10.8% below the long term trend line (red line below), which provides some degree of comfort – i.e. how much lower can they go?
However, the news for condominiums in Chicago is not as good. While they haven’t fallen as far as single family homes, they have hit a new low. See the green line above. So condo prices have now fallen 9.5% in the last year and have not yet hit bottom.