NEW YORK — Home prices in many cities, including metro Denver, continued to plunge by record levels in January as sellers cut their asking bids and rising foreclosures took their toll, new data showed Tuesday.
While the spring selling season usually gives the market a bounce, some analysts say any notable improvement may not come until well into the summer. U.S. home prices fell 10.7 percent in January, and the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home-price index of 20 cities saw the steepest decline in the index’s two-decade history.
Home prices in Denver fell 5.1 percent during the period, ranking 14th out of the 20 cities for declining values, according to the index.
Worst-hit were Las Vegas and Miami, both reporting 19.3 percent drops, as the regions are still paying the price for rampant speculation and overbuilding during the boom years. Those cities and 14 others, including Phoenix, San Diego and Detroit, posted record lows.
“I wouldn’t be looking for a pattern of improvement until April, May or June,” said Brian Bethune, Global Insight’s chief U.S. economist.
Only Charlotte, N.C., squeaked by as a gainer in the Case-Shiller index, with a 1.8 percent rise in January compared with a year earlier.
“Home prices continue to fall, decelerate and reach record lows across the nation,” said David Blitzer, index committee chairman at S&P. “No markets seem to be completely immune from the housing crisis.”
Blitzer said all 20 cities that S&P tracks have seen falling prices for five consecutive months when compared with the prior month. What’s more, the declines are growing in severity, with 13 of the 20 cities reporting their biggest single monthly declines in January.
A narrower survey, released separately Tuesday by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, said home prices fell 3 percent in January from the same month last year and dipped 1.1 percent from December.
The agency showed a 0.49 percent decline in Denver-Aurora, a 4.8 percent decline in Greeley and a 2.9 percent gain in Boulder over the past year.
The National Association of Realtors said sales rose 2.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.03 million units — the biggest increase in a year.
Denver Post staff writer Aldo Svaldi contributed to this report.
