First, to all U.K. readers I want to properly and whole heartedly welcome you the housing malaise!

How’s that for an U.S. export! Take that you Redcoats!

Recently, the two most prominent and long running monthly U.K. housing price indices registered the largest year-over-year declines in at least 15 years.

The “Nationwide” series, which reported data through May indicated that U.K. home prices declined 4.4% on a year-over-year basis while the “Halifax” series, which reported data through April indicated that U.K. home prices declined 3.68% on a year-over-year basis.

This week the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their existing home sales report for the third quarter of 2007 showing, in truly stark terms, the tremendously broad nature of the housing downturn.

Today, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) published their Home Price Index (HPI) data for Q1 2008 showing unprecedentedly widespread weakness with 47 states including Washington DC experiencing peak home price declines with 32 declining better than 2% and 8 declining more that 7%.

Topping the list of peak decliners by state is California at -23.22%, Nevada at -19.93%, Michigan at -15.71%, Florida at -14.76%, Arizona at -10.96%, Massachusetts at -7.62%, Rhode Island at -7.29%, and New Hampshire at -7.27%.

Today, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) published their Home Price Index (HPI) data for Q4 2007 showing unprecedentedly widespread weakness with 49 states and Washington DC experiencing peak home price declines with 20 declining better than 2% and 8 declining more that 6%.

Topping the list of peak decliners by state is California at -14.72%, Michigan at-13.48%, Nevada at -11.50%, Florida at -8.51%, Washington DC at -8.07, Arizona at -7.11%, Massachusetts as -6.34% and Rhode Island at -6.02%.

Sources inside the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) report that tomorrows monthly existing home sales results will show that January single family home sales crashed 27.7% on a year-over-year basis while condo sales collapsed 33.7% over the same period.

Further, the single family median selling price declined 5.6% on a year-over-year basis to $321,000 while condo median prices increased 3.5% to $277,500.

The following charts (click for larger) show the decline in single family home sales since 2005.

Notice that January 2008 is registering a home sales count well below even the 2007 level as well as indicating that the February’s results will be well below 2000 units, a significant decline.

Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for December continues to reflect tremendous weakness for the nation’s housing markets with 17 of the 20 metro areas tracked reporting year-over-year declines and ALL metro areas showing substantial declines from their respective peaks.

Furthermore, the decline to the 10 city composite index declined a record 9.82% as compared to December 2006 far surpassing the all prior year-over-year decline records firmly placing the current decline in uncharted territory in terms of relative intensity.

This report appears to continue to indicate that during the fall we essentially entered the serious price “free-fall” phase (look at the charts below) of the housing decline.

Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for September continues to reflect significant weakness for the nation’s housing markets with 13 of the 20 metro areas tracked reporting year-over-year declines and now ALL metro areas showing declines from their respective peaks.

Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for November continues to reflect tremendous weakness for the nation’s housing markets with 17 of the 20 metro areas tracked reporting year-over-year declines and ALL metro areas showing declines from their respective peaks.

How many times have you heard real estate industry insiders say words to the effect of “you know, you can’t time the bottom”?

This notion has been so popularized that you may have even encountered it from non-realtor friends and family but what real evidence is there to suggest that you can’t actually time your home purchase to correspond, at least roughly, with the trough of a major downturn?

Let’s remember that regional housing markets are large and complex beasts where cyclical changes don’t take place overnight or even in several selling seasons.

Housing Busts, like their prior Boom periods, typically take years to transition through the major sales and price corrections only to be greeted by a lengthy phase of “bouncing” along the bottom of the subsequent trough.

Yesterday’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for October continues to reflect significant weakness for the nation’s housing markets with 17 of the 20 metro areas tracked reporting year-over-year declines and now ALL metro areas showing declines from their respective peaks.

Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for March continues to reflect the extraordinary weakness seen in the nation’s housing markets with now 19 of the 20 metro areas tracked reporting year-over-year declines and ALL metro areas showing substantial declines from their respective peaks.

Readers should take a moment to carefully reflect on the charts below as this level of price decline occurring simultaneously across the whole of the U.S. is not only unprecedented but is probably the purest expression of the fundamental collapse of wealth and well being for our nations typical home owning household.

Like the MIT/CRE Property Index, Standard & Poor’s also tracks commercial real estate (CRE) prices for various commercial property types.

Although recent results have revealed some slowing across all classes of commercial real estate, January’s results again show a continuation of price growth.

All components experienced growth both on a year-over-year basis with all but the “office” component gaining as compared to the prior monthly result.

The charts below show the National index and the component indices since 1994 (click for larger).

Sources inside the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) report that next week’s monthly existing home sales results will show that February single family home sales crashed 22.9% on a year-over-year basis while condo sales collapsed 34.6% over the same period.

Further, the single family median home value declined 4.6% on a year-over-year basis to $310,000 while condo median prices decreased 6.7% to $252,000.

It’s also important to note that February’s single family home sales count was the lowest February count on record since 1996 and at 1857 units sold was 26.91% below the record peak set in February 1999 and 22.9% below the more recent peak of February 2007.

Today’s results of the Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic Indicators continues to predict troubled times ahead declining 0.4% from January’s revised level and 1.53% on a year-over-year basis compared to February 2007, a fifth straight monthly decline and sixth straight year-over-year decline leaving the index at 135.4.

It’s important to note that a year-over-year decline greater than 1.5% has ONLY preceded EVERY recession that has occurred in the last 59 years so the six significant consecutive year-over-year declines strongly suggests that overall the components of the index are indicating that recession is either here or very near.

Note that at the end of March, The Conference Board will release its annual benchmark revision to the index as some of the source data is updated.

In the wake of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) absurd attack on Professor Robert Shiller and possibly even more ridiculous attempt to discredit the validity of the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices (CSI), it appears that there is a subtle, yet growing, effort on the part of local Realtors and other interested parties to publicly discount the accuracy of the CSI.

Spurious accusations abound but several center on the CSI being misleading, either because of an assumed complete bias towards the local metro markets they primarily track or because of the exclusion of condo and new construction properties from their calculations or even that the indices are simply used (with purposely dishonest intent) to portray a gloomier picture than reality.

This recurring monthly post tracks the latest results of the housing market seen in Arlington Massachusetts.

I choose Arlington as a result of the Boston Globe’s recently published and absurdly anecdotal and ludicrous farce about the town’s “hot” housing market.

The ridiculous tone and outright mishandling of the housing data by the Boston Globe “reporter” would almost be comical if it weren’t for the fact that the Globe’s editor, Martin Baron, ALSO blundered seriously when he responded to my email about the discrepancies.

Baron attempted to justify the articles contents and in so doing, he disclosed his disgracefully poor and obviously unsophisticated abilities with even the most basic economic data.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

Today, State Street Global Markets released their latest monthly read of Investor Confidence showing that confidence for North American institutional investors increased 6.0% since
January while European and Asian investor confidence remained relatively flat to mildly negative all resulting in an increase of 3.5% to the aggregate Global Investor Confidence Index.

Given that that the confidence indices purport to “measure investor confidence on a quantitative basis by analyzing the actual buying and selling patterns of institutional investors”, it’s interesting to consider the performance surrounding the 2001 recession and reflect on the performance seen more recently.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

There has been growing speculation and concern that the commercial real estate (CRE) markets will inevitably follow the lead of the residential markets down into a recessionary decline.

The notion of commercial real estate markets suffering a similar downturn as residential is both supported by historical correlations (e.g. residential and non-residential investment) as well as the anecdotally logical outcome for a market that has seen similar levels of loose over-lending.

Fortunately, we need not speculate about the current state of CRE as the MIT Center for Real
Estate tracks commercial property prices with a series of indexes that cover Apartment, Office,
Industrial and Retail property types.

Today, Countrywide Financial (NYSE:CFC) released their February Operational Results showing that delinquencies and foreclosures are continuing their climb to troubling levels with delinquencies jumping over 46% to 6.91% of total number of loans and over 66% to 7.44% of total unpaid principle balance while foreclosures jumped over 61% to 1.13% of total number of loans and soaring 105% to 1.64% of total unpaid principle balance.

Prior to January 2007, Countrywide reported foreclosure data as a percentage of the total number of loans serviced which obviously lacked complete clarity.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

Today, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) released their Housing Market Index (HMI) showing continued evidence that the new home market is experiencing a prolonged recession.

The release came along with a renewed sense of reality and some guarded, yet optimistic, outlook from Chief Economist David Seiders, who has now revised his outlook, pushing his prediction for some level of recovery in the new home market to the second half of 2008.

Yesterday, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) published their Home Price Index (HPI) data for Q3 2007 showing continued deceleration of home price appreciation in most regions as well as a broadening of outright declines now including 23 states declining from their respective peaks and 11 states declining on a year-over-year basis.

Today’s release of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers for November showed in unequivocal terms that the US consumer is feeling the burn from declining home values, increased fuel costs and a general uncertainty about the future of the economy.

In fact, short of a brief plunge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the current levels for the Index of Consumer Sentiment and the Index of Consumer Expectations are at lows not seen since the early 1990’s.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

Like the MIT/CRE Property Index, Standard & Poor’s also tracks commercial real estate (CRE) prices for various commercial property types.

Although recent results have revealed some slowing across all classes of commercial real estate, December’s results show a continuation of price growth.

All components experienced growth both on a year-over-year basis and as compared to the prior monthly result with the greatest gains seen in office properties.

The charts below show the National index and the component indices since 1993 (click for larger).