The Standard and Poors Case-Shiller Price Index for January 2010 is out.
Seasonally adjusted, prices rose 0.3% from December, not seasonally adjusted, home prices dropped 0.4% in January 2010.
Prices are now back to Fall 2003 levels.
The annual rates of decline of the 10-City and 20-City Composites improved in January compared to December
2009. In fact, the 10-City Composite is unchanged versus where it was a year ago, and the 20-City Composite is down only 0.7% versus January 2009. Annual rates for the two Composites have not been this close to a positive print since January 2007.
Detroit is now 28% below it's 2000 price levels.
The Housing credit expires at the end of April 2010, but lo behold, cash strapped states are now implementing their own home buyer's tax credit.
Calculated Risk, notes this report's data is only the not seasonally adjusted, but has graphed up the not seasonally adjusted data.
I'll borrow one graph from Calculated Risk for it's so damning, the total price drop per region since the housing bubble peak.
The Mess That Greenspan Made has a great graph on Case-Shiller seasonal adjustments. Looks like a resonating standing wave! In other words, magically seasonal adjustment cycles are getting higher amplitude, imagine that....in a housing crash. You've gotta check out this post.
Consumer Confidence
data here, is up 52.5 from 46.4. This data is for March 2010.
Ok, I decided to not write it up because frankly, I have yet to figure out what good this metric really is for except the overall mood and perception of the country.
Considering the country believes Obama is Muslim and other ridiculous stuff, unless this index is used in some real world numbers for calculating other stuff, I just don't get it...so what and who cares what Americans perceive? Does this mean that the snow job has worked well last month? It is a public relations index? Is it a marketing index?
Seriously. I need to write up something about useless data vs. meaningful data, but if someone else wishes to take this on, and or requests me to write it up in more detail than I can locate elsewhere, let me know.
I just don't get the point of this.