”Survey says” looks at various rankings and scorecards judging geographic locations while noting these grades are best seen as a mix of artful interpretation and data.
Buzz: California home prices are falling faster off their peaks than elsewhere in the nation.
Source: My trusty spreadsheet looked at the widely discussed Case-Shiller home price indexes for December, released Tuesday, Feb. 28. We focused on the 20-city composite index that includes three California markets. Note: This index is a slow-moving benchmark that essentially is a three-month average of price changes.
Topline
Here’s how three California metro areas in the Case-Shiller 20-city national index fared again the national benchmark …
San Francisco: Down 1.8% for the month and 16% off its May 2022’s price peak – the No. 1 drop among the 20 cities. But prices are still up 24% over three years dating to pre-pandemic December 2019.
San Diego: Down 1.3% for the month and 11.1% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 3 drop – but up 44% over three years.
Los Angeles-Orange County: Down 0.8% for the month and 8.1% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 7 drop – but up 35% over three years.
Compare that trio with the 20-city composite that’s off 0.9% in a month and 6.2% off June 2022’s all-time high. The composite is up 37% over three years.
Bottom line
This isn’t just a California price drop as all 20 U.S. cities had one-month declines for the fifth consecutive month.
The Case-Shiller composite’s recent universal drops are a rarity. Before this slump, all 20 cities had suffered one-month drops just 13 times since 2000. All but one of those across-the-board drops came in two, six-month streaks amid the Great Recession, with 20-city dips ending in February 2008 and February 2009.
Elsewhere
How the 17 other cities fared in December, ranked by drop from their peaks …
Seattle: Down 1.8% for the month and 15.1% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 2 drop – but up 38% over three…
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