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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In an effort to make the most out of the S&P/Case-Shiller indices and the implications of the futures contracts that trade in concert with them, I have created the Home Value Calculator Tool which calculates your home’s value history based on a few simple pieces of criteria.

Plug in your purchase date, the price you paid and the market that your home is located in and…

POOF!

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 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.

UPDATE: Reader Tyrone of the excellent "Housing Bubble Hall of Shame" notes that the current issue of Realtor Magazine features another absurd CSI/Shiller hit piece entitled "Getting Case-Shillered" this time by Realty Times editor Blanche Evens.

Keep in mind, Shiller's MacroMarket's sold the rights to the CSI to Standard & Poor's last February and even when they derived fees from the futures trades, MacroMarkets had no bias toward either the up or down trade.

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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.

One of the more interesting aspects of this era of housing downturn that set it apart from past periods is that today’s events are unfolding against the backdrop of the internet information age.

Aside from the Blogesphere and other internet-based means of mass communications, this is the first housing downturn in which market participants (who are inclined) can easily and efficiently follow aggregate home prices, peruse listings, track price reductions and even “snoop” deed records and seller debt obligations.

Just imagine what the progress of today’s housing downturn would be like without all that information… possibly the 90s bust?

To that end, recall that there are three major sources of housing price data, S&P/Case-Shiller, OFHEO and Radar Logic.

Today, Eric S. Rosengren, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (FRBB) gave an excellent speech entitled “A Historical Perspective on Housing Downturns” which, with some fairly thorough detail, attempts to add some context to the current downturn by reflecting on both the prior housing boom and bust seen in New England as well as the gruesome boom and ongoing 17 year bust currently unraveling in Japan.

At first glance, the recent article concerning the “inside story” on the various home price indices penned by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Chief Economist Lawrence Yun had me a steaming, especially with respect to its spurious attacks against Professor Robert Shiller.

But after reading a bit closer, I began to get a sense of both the truly desperate and unhealthy circumstances these used-house salesman have created for themselves (and America) as well as the lengths they will go to as they devolve further and further into madness.

I suppose that you could almost feel bad for this dwindling outfit of dimwitted losers had it not been for the obvious absurdity of the bed they made over the last decade and the faux riches it brought them.

Today, I updated the S&P/Case-Shiller/Futures Tool to fix a few annoying bugs and to add functionality that allows for some new and really exciting data visualizations.

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

Single family home sales, on a year-over-year basis, are now falling in every state except for Idaho and South Dakota and North Dakota (see chart below and click for larger version and note that NH doesn’t report sales data) with even those states sales growth being flat to anemic.

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.

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.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage increased 1 basis point since last week to 5.75% while the purchase application volume decreased by 11.8% and the refinance application volume slumped 38.1% compared to last week’s results.

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 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.

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.

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.

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, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

With the federal bailout now well underway and seeing that the battered massive “linchpin” mortgage enterprises of Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) will, with the help of the “temporary” increase of the conforming loan limits, the brazen lowering of their capital requirements and other even more novel actions, ride to the rescue of the nation’s housing markets!

But who will rescue them when the time comes?

I suppose you and me, our children and their children too…. It’s a real shame since these enterprises seemed to be doing so well recently, short of that stint in 2004 where Fannie Mae executives fleeced the company of over $100 million in fraudulent bonuses and the like…

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.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.