Wall Street Journal: “Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities have dropped a record 15.3% in the past year”

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports:

Home-Price Gains Are Erased, Now Stand at 2004-2005 Levels

…Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities have dropped a record 15.3% in the past year and are now back to where they were in 2004, according to the Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor’s…

The S&P/Case-Shiller results come a day after Harvard University’s annual report on housing [link] said the housing slump, already shaping up to be the worst in a generation, still hasn’t run its full course. The study said the fall in home prices and the rise in mortgage defaults are the worst since the 1960s and 1970s…

Housing starts [in May] were down 32% from a year earlier…

See also:

Boston Globe: “Mass. May home sales drop on year-to-year basis” (6/23/08)
The median selling price in May for single-family homes in
Massachusetts fell 9.2 percent to $322,500, compared with $355,000 in
May 2007, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reported today.

The volume of Massachusetts single-family homes sold fell 10.1 percent
in May to 3,491 in a year-to-year comparison, the association said, and
the median selling price for a Massachusetts condominium in May dropped
2.6 percent from $290,000 in May 2007 to $282,500 in May 2008, the
association said.

On a volume basis, the number of Massachusetts condos sold in May fell 24.5 percent to 1,640, the association said…

AP: Backlog of unsold single-family homes at highest level since 1985 (5/23/08)

Woes in Condo Market Build As New Supply Floods Cities: Wall Street Journal (3/22/08)