Virtual Open Houses

Are home prices recovering or are they falling faster than ever? It all depends on which closely-watched index you believe.

The Case Shiller index of home prices in 20 major cities released today showed that prices fell 2.8% in January from December, and dropped 19% from a year ago, the steepest annual rate on record. Last week, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that U.S. home prices actually rose 1.7% in January compared to December (on a seasonally-adjusted basis), the first increase in a year.

I called Andrew Leventis, senior economist at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (formerly known as the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight) and he also seemed a bit perplexed by the conflicting results.

"These are price changes that are unprecedented in recorded data history for real estate," Leventis said. "When there's so much volatility in the market, your model does its best to fit the data points, but the data points are all over the map."

It helps to understand how both indexes are calculated. They are close cousins, because they track the repeat sales of the same homes. But the Case-Shiller index uses information from county recorder and assessors offices and include sales involving subprime, conforming, and jumbo mortgages. The FHFA index measures sales of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages and does not capture subprime loans or jumbo sales, which are typically above $417,000.

Leventis said that both indexes are susceptible to statistical noise, especially in a monthly sample. An unusual number of sales in California, where sales of bank-owned properties are surging, could skew the numbers in one direction. Including more sales in other stronger markets could push the prices in the other direction, he said.

It seems that one explanation for Case Shiller's huge drop is that the luxury home market has been hit hard in recent months. High-end homes are lingering on the market and sellers are dropping prices. At the same time, foreclosures are pushing down prices on the lower end. FHFA doesn't include most jumbo sales or foreclosure sales that involved subprime mortgages.

Leventis said he expects that the FHFA index for January will be revised downward when the February report is released next month.

Brian Bethune, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass., said the truth about the market is probably somewhere in between.

"You probably have to meld the two together and combine that with the fact sales volumes were up in February," Bethune said. "To some extent, the silver lining is that with the crisis, prices have come down to a level where people have come back into the marketplace."

Lenders have helped an increasing number of mortgage borrowers to get current on payments and stay in their homes, but the tide of foreclosures is still rising.

Colliers Houston & Co. has been retained to provide management services for over 1.95 million square feet of retail and industrial space contained within Panattoni Development Cos.' Tri-State portfolio.

News of the Manhattan office market's poor performance continues to roll in as FirstService Williams releases its first quarter 2009 report. The dismal numbers, the real estate services firm concludes, come as no surprise given New York City's--and the country's--economic downslide.

Mack-Cali Realty Corp. announced that in the first quarter of 2009 it has leased over 45,000 square feet at Mack-Cali Centre II, located at 650 From Road in Paramus, N.J. Tenants include B/E Aerospace Inc., RBC Capital Markets Corp., and Harsco Corp.

Continuing its quest to increase liquidity and reduce debt through the sale of non-core assets in Orange County, Calif., office landlord Maguire Properties Inc. has just taken another step in its disposition program. The struggling Los Angeles-based REIT, whose financial woes first began to surface soon after its $3 billion acquisition of a former Equity Office Properties Trust portfolio from Blackstone Real Estate Advisors two years ago, has closed the $22 million sale of an 86,000-square-foot office building in Irvine to building tenant Allergan Inc.

The returns are beginning to come in on the early 2009 performance of the nation’s largest office market, and the picture emerging is neither rosy nor especially surprising.

A&B Properties Inc., the real estate subsidiary of Alexander & Baldwin Inc., has completed the sale of Southbank II, a 120,800-square-foot, single-story office building in Phoenix, Ariz., and a 37,300-square-foot ground lease parcel in Kahului, Maui.

New-home sales nationally jumped 4.7% in February, the first month-to-month jump since July, according to the Commerce Dept. Many home builders have lowered their prices or just built smaller homes to compete with bank-owned properties. That's why the median new home price sagged 18% from February, 2008 to just over $200,000.

Meanwhile, in the not-so Golden Anymore State. The California Association of Realtors posted some surprising stats today. Existing, single-family home sales increased 83 percent in February to an annualized rate of 620,410 homes. The statewide median price decreased 40.8 percent to $247,590

California’s Unsold Inventory Index fell to 6.5 months in February, compared with 15.3 months in February 2008

The median number of days it took to sell a single-family home declined to 51.5 days in February 2009, compared with 69.3 days in February 2008.

“Home sales in California continue to be considerably stronger than the nationwide sales figures,” said California Realtors' President James Liptak. “The market will continue to register large, but diminishing year-to-year percentage gains in the coming months, as current sales are compared against the extremely low numbers that prevailed during the early months of the credit crunch.”

“The California median price has declined by a larger margin than the nationwide median price,” said the association's Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young. “This can be attributed to the under $500,000 portion of the market, which has experienced larger price declines than the other market segments due to the large share of distressed homes for sale.”

Sales of newly constructed homes unexpectedly rose in February, rebounding nearly 5% after sinking to the lowest level on record in January, according to a government report released Wednesday.