Home prices - how low can you go?

Standard and Poor's released the March data (.pdf) for the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showing a 14.4 percent year-over-year decline for the 20-City Composite Index, the steepest decline on record. Indices for individual cities are shown below:On their current trajectories, Los Angeles and Miami should overtake Washington D.C. and New York within a few months.

David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's noted:

The steep downturn in residential real estate continues. There are very few silver linings that one can see in the data. Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path, with 19 of the 20 metro areas reporting annual declines, and six of those now at negative rates exceeding -20%. Looking closely at these returns, you can see that 15 of the metro areas are also reporting record lows, and eleven are in double digit decline, with Chicago being the latest metro area to join these ranks.

The monthly data paints a similar picture, with 18 of the metro areas reporting at least seven consecutive months of negative returns. For the first time in as many months, we finally saw monthly price appreciation in two of the metro areas – Charlotte was up 0.2% in March over February, and Dallas was up 1.1%.

In tabular form, the data looks like this:
Charlotte remains the only metropolitan area in the index with a gain from year ago levels with a modest 0.8 percent increase, down from last months year-over-year gain of 1.5 percent.