John Rebchook is a former Rocky Mountain News reporter with more than 30 years of experience in writing and communications... Although homes in the Denver area lost 4.9 percent in April from a year earlier, that was good enough to land the top of the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released today. And from March to April, Denver homes rose by 1.5 percent, second only to the 1.7 percent gain posted by Dallas.
“I think it is awesome,” said Stacy Neir, an agent with Kentwood City Properties. “It is a bit of being the best of the worst. Still, only dropping about 5 percent when compared to the rest of the market, shows that we are in much better shape relative to the rest of the nation.”
Neir also noted that “obviously, these are just averages. Real estate is very local and depends on what neighborhood you are talking about.”
For the one-year period, through April, the 20 major metropolitan areas on the list showed a 18.1 percent drop. It also is broken into a 10-city list, which includes Denver, which posted a 18.0 percent drop. Phoenix was the worst-performer, showing a 35.3 percent lost. It was followed by Las Vegas, with a 32.2 percent decline and San Francisco, which fell 28 percent.
Following Denver as the best performers, were Dallas and Boston, down 5 percent and 7.7 percent respectively, in the the one-year period that ended in April.
Overall, the 20 cities are not as doing as poorly as they have in the past.
“The pace of decline in residential real estate slowed in April,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s. “In addition to the 10-city and 20-city composites, 13 of the 20 metro areas also saw improvement in their annual return compared to atha of March. Furthermore, every metro area, exept for Charlotte, recorded an improvmeen tin monthly returns over March. While one month’s dta cannot determine if a turnaround has begun, it seems tha some stabilization may be appearing in some of the regions. We are entering the seasonally strong period in the housing market, so it will take soem time to determine if a recovery is really here.”
He also said that other parts of the economy also have shown some strength.
“The stock market bottomed in March and measures of consumer confidence have turned upward,” Bitzer said. “This report shows that these better spirits are also appearing in the housing market.”
