S&P/Case-Shiller: House prices down 16.6% year over year

S&P/Case-Shiller released their latest home price index numbers yesterday:

Home prices continued to fall as the economic downturn deepened in September, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes and the Federal Housing Finance Agency home price index.

"The turmoil in the financial markets is placing further downward pressure on a housing market already weakened by its own fundamentals," Case-Shiller index committee chairman David Blitzer said.

For the third quarter, the Case-Shiller national index posted a 16.6% decline in home prices from a year earlier, worse than the 15.1% drop posted in the second quarter.

Don't worry. As people have been predicting for three years now, the recovery is right around the corner.