Home prices fall 5.4 percent in San Diego County in 2011

SAN DIEGO (Wire Service) - San Diego’s home prices fell 0.7 percent between November and December (2011), according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released Feb. 28.

In 2011 as a whole, prices fell 5.4 percent in San Diego, according to S&P.

Of the 20 large housing markets around the country tracked by the organization, only four performed worse than San Diego last year. However, the region has one of the highest appreciation rates over the life of the index.

The Case-Shiller Index took the average cost of a house in each market in January 2000, assigned it a value of 100, and tracked the subsequent rise and fall.

San Diego’s index value in December was 150.42, meaning an appreciation over about a dozen years of more than 50 percent. The increase is the fourth highest, behind Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles.

The national composite of 20 cities in December was 136.71.

“While we thought we saw some signs of stabilization in the middle of 2011, it appears that neither the economy nor consumer confidence was strong enough to move the market in a positive direction as the year ended,” said David

Blitzer, chairman of the S&P Index Committee, about the national rating.

“After a prior three years of accelerated decline, the past two years has been a story of a housing market that is bottoming out but has not yet stabilized,”

Blitzer said.

Phoenix, at 0.8 percent, and Miami, at 0.2 percent, were the only markets to post gains in December, according to S&P. Only previously struggling Detroit showed an annual gain, at 0.5 percent.