What is happening with home prices at this time?

Home prices in metro Denver posted a year-over-year decline in September for the
15th consecutive month, and also slipped from the previous month, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Prices Index, released Tuesday.

Denver area prices declined 0.8 percent in September from August, the first month-to-month decline in home prices in six months, the closely followed Case-Shiller report said.

Denver home prices rose 0.4 percent in August from the previous month, were flat in July but rose in April, May and June from the previous months, with increases ranging from 1.4 to 1.6 percent. Before that came 10 straight months of price declines from the previous month.

Over the year, Denver prices in September were down 1.5 percent from September 2010 levels, down a bit from August’s 1.6 percent year-over-year decline.

The prices are for resales of stand-alone single-family homes only, not new construction or condominiums.

Denver’s month-over-month decline in September was slightly greater than the 0.6 percent drop for a composite of the 20 cities tracked in the monthly Case-Shiller reports. Of those cities, only New York, Portland and Washington saw price rises.

For the full 12 months ending in September, the 20-city composite price dropped 3.6 percent. Only Washington saw a rise (1 percent) in that period; the biggest declines were in Atlanta (down 9.8 percent), Minneapolis (down 7.4 percent) and Las Vegas (down 7.3 percent).

David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices, said in the report that “the plunging collapse of prices seen in 2007-2009 seems to be behind us.”

But he added: “Any chance for a sustained recovery [in prices] will probably need a stronger economy.”

The report assigns index values to the 20 cities based on current average home prices in relation to what they were in January 2000.

Denver’s index for September was 125.44, meaning that prices were 25.44 percent higher than they were in January 2000. The 20-city average index was 141.97 for September.

Each month from October 2009 through June 2010, the Case-Shiller report showed year-over-year increases in Denver-area home prices. That ended in July 2010.

Before October 2009, Denver saw 36 straight months of year-over-year price declines, peaking at a 5.7 percent drop in February 2009 from the year before.

Case-Shiller is one of several popular measures of home prices, using different methodologies, covering different housing types and giving different results.

A Nov. 8 report from Denver-based Integrated Asset Services said that the median single-family house price in metro Denver declined 1.6 percent in the third quarter from the same period of 2010, although it was up 1.7 percent from the second quarter of this year.