National Trend of Home Price Declines Continues into the Second Half of 2008

Atlanta home pricing fell 8.5% over the last 12 months.

PRNewswire/ -- Data through August 2008, released today by Standard & Poor's for its S&P/Case-Shiller(1) Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, shows continued broad based declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the United States, a trend that prevailed throughout the first half of 2008 and has continued into the second half.

"The downturn in residential real estate prices continued, with very few bright spots in the data," says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. "The 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite reported record 12-month declines. Furthermore, for the fifth (5th) straight month, every region reported negative annual returns. This started when Charlotte, NC, was the last region to turn negative back in April 2008. Both the 10-City and 20-City Composites have been in year-over-year decline for 20 consecutive months. Of the 20 regions, 13 of them had their annual returns worsen from last month's report. As seen throughout 2008, the Sun Belt markets are being hit the most. Phoenix and Las Vegas are both reporting annual declines in excess of 30%, and Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego are all in excess of 25%."

Nine of the 20 regions have record annual declines. Phoenix and Las Vegas are now returning -30.7% and -30.6% versus August 2007, respectively. Each of the California markets -- Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego -- are down more than 25% from their values 12 months ago. Miami and Tampa, the two Florida markets, are down 28.1% and 18.1%, respectively.

For the August/July period only 2 regions, Cleveland and Boston, had positive returns. Cleveland returned +1.1% and Boston returned +0.1%. Boston has had positive monthly returns for each of the past five months. Dallas and Denver's streaks of 4+ straight positive returning months ended in August. San Francisco was the biggest decliner for the month returning -3.5%. This worsened from its July/June return of -1.8%. From August 2007 to August 2008, Dallas and Charlotte have the best relative performance. Dallas is down 2.7% over the year and Charlotte is down 2.8%.


The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are published on the last Tuesday of each month at 9:00 am ET. They are constructed to accurately track the price path of typical single-family homes located in each metropolitan area provided. Each index combines matched price pairs for thousands of individual houses from the available universe of arms-length sales data. The S&P/Case-Shiller National U.S. Home Price Index tracks the value of single-family housing within the United States. The index is a composite of single-family home price indices for the nine U.S. Census divisions and is calculated quarterly. The S&P/Case-Shiller Composite of 10 Home Price Index is a value-weighted average of the 10 original metro area indices. The S&P/Case-Shiller Composite of 20 Home Price Index is a value-weighted average of the 20 metro area indices. The indices have a base value of 100 in January 2000; thus, for example, a current index value of 150 translates to a 50% appreciation rate since January 2000 for a typical home located within the subject market.

These indices are generated and published under agreements between Standard & Poor's and Fiserv, Inc. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are produced by Fiserv, Inc. In addition to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, Fiserv also offers home price index sets covering thousands of zip codes, counties, metro areas, and state markets. The indices, published by Standard & Poor's, represent just a small subset of the broader data available through Fiserv.

(1) Case-Shiller(R) and Case-Shiller Indexes are registered trademarks of Fiserv, Inc.

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The Conference Board U.S. Leading Economic Index Edges Up Slightly

PRNewswire/ -- The Conference Board reports today that the Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators edged up 0.3 percent in September, following a 0.9 percent decline in August, and a 0.7 percent decline in July.

Says Ken Goldstein, Labor Economist at The Conference Board: "This summer, before the financial market turmoil intensified, the overall economy was entering a period of decline. The extreme volatility in the financial market, and the near freeze-up of credit, will no doubt weaken the economy further. But latest data suggest that conditions in the non-financial economy are not falling apart. Data on hand reflect a contracting economy, but not one in free fall. More likely, what's going on in the financial market is a stretching of the recovery process - which could take a full year to develop."

The Conference Board reports that the Coincident Index fell by 0.5 percent in September, following no change in August, and a 0.2 percent decrease in July. The Lagging Index fell by 0.2 percent in September, following a 0.2 percent rise in August.

-- The leading index increased in September, the first increase in the
last five months. Real money supply, consumer expectations, the
interest rate spread, and the index of supplier deliveries all made
large positive contributions to the index in September, more than
offsetting the negative contributions from building permits, stock
prices, initial claims for unemployment insurance (inverted) and the
average workweek in manufacturing. From March to September, the
leading index decreased 1.3 percent (a -2.5 percent annual rate),
declining modestly slower than the 1.7 percent decrease (a -3.4
percent annual rate) that prevailed in the previous six months.
However, the weaknesses among the leading indicators have remained
widespread over the past six months.

-- The coincident index decreased sharply in September and it has
declined or held steady since October 2007. Industrial production fell
steeply this month, while employment continued to decline. The
six-month decline in the coincident index has picked up to 0.8 percent
(a -1.7 percent annual rate), from a decrease of 0.3 percent (a -0.6
percent annual rate) in the previous six months, while the weaknesses
among the coincident indicators remained very widespread. In
September, the coincident index decreased more than the lagging index,
and the coincident-to-lagging ratio continued to decline as a result.

-- With consistently widespread weakness among its components, the
leading index has been falling since July 2007. Following the leading
index, the coincident index, a monthly measure of current economic
conditions, has also been decreasing, and its rate of decline has
accelerated in recent months. Meanwhile, real GDP growth slowed to a
1.8 percent average annual rate in the first half of the year, down
from an average annual rate of 2.3 percent in the second half of 2007.
Taken together, the behavior of the composite indexes suggests that
the economy is unlikely to improve in the near term.


LEADING INDICATORS

Six of the ten indicators that make up the leading index increased in September. The positive contributors - beginning with the largest positive contributor - were real money supply*, index of consumer expectations, interest rate spread, index of supplier deliveries (vendor performance), manufacturers' new orders for nondefense capital goods*, and manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials*. The negative contributors - beginning with the largest negative contributor - were building permits, average weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance (inverted), stock prices, and average weekly manufacturing hours.

The leading index now stands at 100.6 (2004=100). Based on revised data, this index decreased 0.9 percent in August and decreased 0.7 percent in July. During the six-month span through September, the leading index decreased 1.3 percent, with two out of ten components advancing (diffusion index, six-month span equals 20 percent).

COINCIDENT INDICATORS

Two of the four indicators that make up the coincident index increased in September. The positive contributors to the index - beginning with the larger positive contributor - were personal income less transfer payments* and manufacturing and trade sales*. The negative contributors were industrial production and employees on nonagricultural payrolls.

The coincident index now stands at 106 (2004=100). This index remained unchanged in August and decreased 0.2 percent in July. During the six-month period through September, the coincident index decreased 0.8 percent, with one out of four components advancing (diffusion index, six-month span equals 25 percent).

LAGGING INDICATORS

The lagging index stands at 112.2 (2004=100) in September, with two of the seven components advancing. The positive contributors to the index - beginning with the larger positive contributor - were commercial and industrial loans outstanding* and the ratio of manufacturing and trade inventories to sales*. The negative contributors - beginning with the largest negative contributor - were average duration of unemployment (inverted), change in CPI for services, and change in labor cost per unit of output*. The average prime rate charged by banks, and ratio of consumer installment credit to personal income* held steady in September. Based on revised data, the lagging index increased 0.2 percent in August and increased 0.5 percent in July.

DATA AVAILABILITY AND NOTES

The data series used by The Conference Board to compute the three composite indexes and reported in the tables in this release are those available "as of" 12 Noon on October 17, 2008. Some series are estimated as noted below.

* Series in the leading index that are based on The Conference Board estimates are manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials, manufacturers' new orders for nondefense capital goods, and the personal consumption expenditure used to deflate the money supply. Series in the coincident index that are based on The Conference Board estimates are personal income less transfer payments and manufacturing and trade sales. Series in the lagging index that are based on The Conference Board estimates are inventories to sales ratio, consumer installment credit to income ratio, change in labor cost per unit of output, the consumer price index, and the personal consumption expenditure used to deflate commercial and industrial loans outstanding.

The procedure used to estimate the current month's personal consumption expenditure deflator (used in the calculation of real money supply and commercial and industrial loans outstanding) now incorporates the current month's consumer price index when it is available before the release of the U.S. Leading Economic Indicators.

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