L.A. home prices down 3.3%

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L.A. home prices have fallen by an average of 3.3% over the past year, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index -- which we consider to be the most reliable measure of home price trends.

The report, which covers price changes through May, shows:
--Nationally, the level of home price appreciation has now been declining for 18 months in a row, since December 2005.
--The 10-city composite shows year-over-year price declines of 3.4% in May.
--“At a national level, declines in annual home price returns are showing no signs of a slowdown or turnaround,” says economist Robert Shiller.

Why we like Case-Shiller: it is the only index we know of that even tries to track the price of a typical single-family house in a given city. It uses ‘matched pairs’ of price data -- that is, if a specific house sold twice in a period of time, it uses those two data points to measure price change.

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Photo Credit: Reuters