Where’s Charlottesville in the Case-Shiller index?

Huh. Thanks to the recent commenter for this:

Nationally, 18% of current homesellers have negative equity.

And today, Tuesday, there’s this:

‘Yale economist Robert Shiller, who developed one of the widely followed gauges of home prices, said in a speech Tuesday that home prices, which have already fallen about 15 percent from their peak in 2006, may fall further than the 30 percent drop experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s, so far the biggest decline in home prices in the country.

“Basically we are in uncharted territory,” Shiller said, noting that the 85 percent rise in home prices from 1997 to 2006 after adjusting for inflation had represented the biggest housing boom in U.S. history, so the fall in prices could be just as historic.’

From the AP newswire.

March’s existing home sales are down. And I’m part of the problem. I’m waiting to buy.

Perhaps C’ville won’t be quite as impacted as other areas of the county…but still, there’s so much inventory, prices are headed down.

The Charlottesville/Central Virginia/Shenandoah Valley markets are not covered by the Case-Shiller index. Real estate is local; while trends may be drawn from this type of research, and while the proverbial turned-corner may still be just over the horizon, it’s important to put his study in the appropriate context.

Regarding the Shiller index, consider this (and also do consider the source (NAR) (no longer available)) –

Secondly, the Case-Shiller price index — which has been gaining more media coverage as of late — covers only 20 markets. Most of these 20 markets coincidentally tend to be located in California, Florida, and other down markets. As a result, the index shows that most of the 20 markets are experiencing price declines. The media, in turn, then puts up a headline like “Home Values Falling Severely in Most U.S. markets.” For the average busy consumer, a headline like this will surely dampen their confidence about buying a home. This is total distortion of market conditions based on a small selection of falling local metro coverage.

With humility, I would argue that some of the best localized market analysis for the Charlottesville region can be found here. While the data used is from the Charlottesville MLS, the data is accurate enough to draw fairly decent conclusions.