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How does the Case-Shiller Index show HOME PRICES have varied among these West Coast cities: SEATTLE, PORTLAND, SAN FRANCISCO, LOS ANGELES and SAN DIEGO over the last 22 years?

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(-100, 0, 100, 200, 300), please let me know.


How does the Case-Shiller Index of the prices of homes sold since 1987 vary among West Coast cities?

The Case-Shiller Index reports of the following West Coast metro areas each month (on the last Tuesday of the month):

Seattle

Portland
San Francisco
Los Angeles
San Diego


The most recent report was published on October 17 for the month of August, 2009.

The following graph shows the relative fluctuation in home prices in the five metropolitan areas over the last 22 years.

Case-Shiller Index
Over Time
The West Coast Metro Areas

How does the Case-Shiller Index of the prices of homes sold since 1987 vary among West Coast cities?



The focal point of this chart is in the approximate center (both vertically and horizontally).

All lines intersect at zero on the Index for January, 2000.
Raw data points both before and after that date are indexed to that value.


The five cities took five different paths in getting to that year 2000 level.

The five cities took drastically different but somewhat similar paths after that date:

They all went up dramatically, but some greatly outpaced others.

They all crashed, some more drastically than others.

They have all turned up in the last four months.

Seattle:
(Available data begins in 1990.)


Seattle home values since 2000 look a lot like those for Portland. It's no surprise that those two Northwest sister cities chart in tandem.

Seattle's high Case-Shiller Index value was 192.3 experienced in July, 2007 -- that means values were then 92.3% higher than in January, 2000.

The Emerald City appears to have bottomed at 149.03 in March, 2009.

Seattle values were somewhat higher than those in Portland in the mid-1990's. But since then the two cities have been in home value lockstep.

Portland:

Oregon's largest metro area also hit its home price high in July, 2007 -- at 186.51 -- with prices up 86.51% over the year 2000.

Portland may have bottomed at 146.85 in April, 2009.

Values in the southern West Coast cities appear to have soared far higher.
They must have been heated up by the sun.

San Francisco:


The Bay Area saw a stutter in its graph in 2001 (the DotCom bust?) but then climbed well ahead of the northern cities.

The SF Case-Shiller high came in May, 2006 at 218.37. That means prices more than doubled in just over six years.

But SF's bust has been worse than that in the Northwest. San Francisco's bottom was at 117.74 in March, 2009 -- leaving home prices only one-fifth higher than in 2000.

Los Angeles:


L.A. home prices soared higher than those in San Francisco -- but they did not fall so low.

The Los Angeles Case-Shiller high was at 293.74 in September, 2006. That means home prices nearly tripled in six years.

The bottom came at 159.18 in May, 2009 -- at a much higher level - as compared to 2000 - than was experienced in San Francisco.

San Diego:


The southern-most metro area on this chart did not soar as high as Los Angeles, but it did not fall as low as San Francisco.

The San Diego high was at 250.34 in November, 2005.

The San Diego low was at 144.43 in April, 2009.




Over-all home prices in all five West Coast cities have gone high and they've gone low -- but they are all currently trending upward.

Let's hope that trend continues.
We need to arrest the slide in home values
across the board...in order to
reduce hardships, foreclosures, short sales -- and that terrible feeling of being
underwater.


The American homeowner has been water-boarded quite enough already.

Posted Sunday Nov 01