Home Prices Go Negative

Home Prices Go Negative

U.S. home prices continued to fall with prices in 10 major cities now down 0.7% year-over-year, according to Standard & Poor's and MacroMarkets LLC, which lately released the Case-Shiller price indexes.

The 10-city index is down 0.7% in the past year, the first year-over-year negative reading since 1996. The 20-city index is down 0.2% year-over-year. A year ago, prices were rising 15%.

"The annual declines in the composites are a good indicator of the dire state of the U.S. residential real estate market," said Robert J. Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets, in a statement.

"We look for price declines in the bubble regions but flat prices nationally," wrote Michelle Meyer, an economist for Lehman Bros. Goldman Sachs economists said they expect prices to fall 5% in 2007 compared with 2006.

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