Isle home prices fell 2.9% in second quarter
Staff and news services
NEW YORK » Hawaii home prices fell 2.9 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier to rank 41st in the country, a federal report released yesterday said.
BIGGEST LOSERS
Year-over-year, second-quarter housing prices were tracked in all states and Washington, D.C.
STATE |
PERCENTAGE CHG.
|
51. California: |
-15.8%
|
50. Nevada: |
-14.1%
|
49. Florida: |
-12.4%
|
48. Arizona: |
-9.2%
|
47. Rhode Island: |
-4.9%
|
41. Hawaii: |
-2.9% |
Source: Bloomberg News
|
California had the worse decline with prices falling 15.8 percent, while Oklahoma ranked No. 1, with home prices rising 4.93 percent.
U.S. home prices fell 4.8 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the biggest decline ever in a 17-year-old government home price index, as banks made it harder to get a mortgage.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the index was 5 percent lower in June than its April 2007 peak, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said in a report yesterday. The measure published by the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac does not include dollar figures for home prices, only the percentage change in homes with mortgages sold to or backed by the world's two biggest mortgage buyers.
The previous record annual drop in the index's 17-year history was 3 percent, set in the January-March period of this year.
Banks, faced with more than $500 billion of mortgage-related losses and asset write-downs, are imposing stricter standards even on borrowers with the best credit. Declines in lending and residential construction will weigh on economic growth in coming months, Federal Reserve policymakers said at their Aug. 5 meeting. The Fed's quarterly survey of bank loan officers released in July showed 75 percent had made it tougher for prime borrowers to get a mortgage, more than the number that said so in the April report.
"It has certainly not been a favorable impact," Andrew Leventis, senior economist at OFHEO, said in an interview.
Adjusted for inflation, home prices fell about 10 percent in the last year, OFHEO said.
Prices fell the most in the Pacific region, down 10 percent from the same period a year earlier for the states of California, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington and Oregon. The next biggest decline was
3 percent in the South Atlantic area, including Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
Prices rose in three regions: 3.2 percent in the West South Central states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana; 2.9 percent in the East South Central area, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama; and 0.4 percent in West North Central states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
"Over the last year we've seen some of the greatest price declines in many parts of the U.S. than we've seen in recorded history, meaning the last couple of decades," Leventis said.