Report: Home prices drop 3.6 percent in month

By Steve Green

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 | 9:50 a.m.

Las Vegas again is near the top of the list of big U.S. cities when it comes to the decline in home values.

Standard & Poor's today released its monthly S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, with numbers for February showing prices in Las Vegas fell 3.6 percent from January -- not exactly good news but an improvement from January, when local prices dropped 4.4 percent from December.

The 20-city composite in the S&P/Case-Shiller report showed a decline in value of 2.2 percent from January to February.

In the list of annual declines, Las Vegas was No. 2 at 31.7 percent, a better showing than Phoenix, down 35.2 percent.

S&P/Case-Shiller said that for the first time in 16 months, the annual decline of its 10-City and 20-City composite did not set a record.

"While the declines in residential real estate continued into February, we witnessed some deceleration in the rate of decline in some of the markets," David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s, said in a statement. "All 20 metro areas recorded a monthly decline in February, but 16 of the 20 metro areas saw an improvement in their monthly returns compared to January. Nine of the 20 metro areas showed improvement in their annual returns compared to their returns in January. Furthermore, this is the first month since October 2007 where the 10- and 20-City Composites did not post a record annual decline. We will certainly need a few more months of data before we can determine if home prices are finally turning around."

The new numbers follow data issued last week by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, which showed prices locally in March were down 4.2 percent from February. In March, the local median price was $149,000, the Realtors reported.

The S&P/Case-Shiller report uses an index system with 100 being the value of homes in January 2000. With the February index value of 121 for Las Vegas, this indicates home prices locally were just 21 percent higher than in 2000 and are down more than 40 percent from their peak in the 2006-2007 period.