How Is Housing Doing? It Depends Who You Ask.

Posted by Rosemarie Litoff on February 27, 2008 under Uncategorized | Comments are off for this article

The OFHEO paints a different picture from the Case-Shiller Index

Yesterday, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight released its fourth-quarter housing data.

The OFHEO report color-coded each state according to its annual price changes. The states shown in red lost value, and everyone else gained. Overall, the OFHEO measured a 0.8% national increase.

Also hitting the wires yesterday was the Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

This report focuses on the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States and painted a much more grim outlook for housing. According to Case-Shiller, prices declined 8.9% nationally.

Both reports are imperfect but one notable difference is that the OFHEO report measures all 291 MSAs in the United States and its data showed that two-thirds of them appreciated last year.

Once again, this just reminds us: real estate is a local phenomenon. Every market is unique with its own price trends, independent from the rest of the country.

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