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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Home Prices Keep On Falling

If anybody was wondering, the so-called "Housing Bubble" has burst. I make this bold assertion due to my deep insight into the field of economics and the following graphs. If you bought a home between 2004 and 2007, I recommend you stop reading now.

Since 2000, the S&P/Case-Shiller Index of Home Prices has done this nationally:I have included some helpful labels to make my point that if you examine the data carefully, you can make an argument for the housing bubble having popped.

What's even more fun is to look at a place like Phoenix, Arizona.
Once again, if you use my helpful label, I think you can pick out a popped housing bubble in there.

Finally, I decided to make a quick graph of the how the housing markets are doing in the four cities (or nearby large cities) the N-216 gang ended up in (sorry Bill but there really isn't anything close to Urbana/Champaign in the data).
Surprisingly, with the exception of Joe and his wild California ways, we all landed in fairly stable housing markets. Doesn't it just sound like Joe to be the one living the crazy life?

Basically, I think that nationally there is still a long way to drop before housing prices hit bottom - so here's to renting!

3 comments:

  1. Yes, California has been hit pretty bad, but I hear not as bad as places like Phoenix.

    As, to your graphs, your arrow really made them much easier to read, understand and interpret. :)

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  2. I have an aunt and uncle that bought a house in Mesa, AZ in 1999 and sold it in 2006, so that bubble thing worked out for them, but it's hit a lot of people very hard.

    About the helpful labels, e had a colloquium speaker whose plots had those kinds of helpful labels, including a picture of some people standing next to the South Pole Telescope with a an arrow pointing to them, labeling them "People".

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  3. Nice post. Honestly, I'm not surprised that there wasn't any data near Champaign/Urbana -- there really isn't anything near Champaign/Urbana except corn fields (those tend to "pop" under slightly different conditions). Anyways, great info, and I agree -- it is a very good time to be renting.

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