The release of the Case Shiller Home Price Index for November must have been pretty hotly anticipated – or S&P’s was having technical problems – maybe both. It took me an hour just to get to the data this morning.
Once again the Case Shiller index shows that Chicago home prices continued to fall – the third month in a row of such price declines and the biggest monthly drop in 3 years. Chicago single family home prices plunged an additional 3.4% in November – also the largest monthly drop of all 20 metro areas in the Case Shiller index. Pretty bleak.
Condominium prices in Chicago plunged even more – 3.8%. As you can see in the graph below the dip at this time of the year is a well established pattern over the last few years and will probably continue through the January release when home prices are likely to establish a new low, which will make this a quadruple dip in Chicago home prices.
The single family home price index is now 33.3% below the bubble peak in September 2006 and back to the levels of May 2001, though prices are still up 2.1% from the recent low reached in April of this year. Chicago condo prices are down a total of 32.9% from the bubble peak and they are back to the level of July/ August 2000.
Because of the seasonal pattern in home prices it’s worth looking at the year over year changes. Relative to last year single family home prices are down 5.9% while condo prices are down 9.7%. In the graph below I’ve plotted the year over year priced drops for single family homes and condos, starting with May 2007 when single family home prices first recorded a year over year drop after the housing bubble popped. As you can see we have not seen a year over year price increase since, though we came close in June 2010 right in the middle of all that homebuyer tax credit silliness.
You can find this and other statistics on our Chicago real estate market statistics page.