House prices still plunging in January

The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index continued to fall rapidly in January:

Home values in 20 major U.S. cities fell at the fastest rate on record in January and are now down a record 19% in the 12 months ending in January, Standard & Poor's reported Tuesday.

The Case-Shiller 20-city home price index fell a record 2.8% in January ...

Prices are down 29% from the peak in mid-2006, according to Case-Shiller. Prices have fallen to September 2003 levels. ...

With prices still falling at a rapid pace, millions of homeowners are finding themselves owing more on their house than it is worth. They cannot sell for what they owe, and they cannot refinance their loan. They cannot borrow against their home to finance their consumption. ...

Here are the price declines in each of the 20 cities over the past year:
Phoenix, down 35%; Las Vegas, down 32.5%; San Francisco, down 32.4%; Miami, down 29.4%; Los Angeles, down 25.8%; San Diego, down 24.9%; Tampa, down 23.3%; Detroit, down 22.6%; Minneapolis, down 20.4%; Washington, down 19.3%; Chicago, down 16.4%: Seattle, down 15%; Atlanta, down 14.3%; Portland, down 14%; New York, down 9.6%; Charlotte, down 8.2%; Boston, down 7.3%; Cleveland, down 5.2%; Denver, down 5.1%; and Dallas, down 4.9%.

From S&P's press release:

"Home prices, which peaked in mid-2006, continued their decline in 2009," says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index committee at Standard & Poor’s. "There are very few bright spots that one can see in the data. Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path, with all of the 20 metro areas reporting annual declines, and nine of the MSA’s falling more than 20% in the last year."

For the Washington, D.C. metro area, house prices have fallen 31.5% since the peak in May 2006, and are still falling. House prices fell 19.3% year-over-year. Month-over-month, seasonally-adjusted house prices fell 1.6% (a 17.7% annual rate). D.C. metro area house prices are back down to the March 2004 level.