National real estate prices, up down and stable

National real estate prices, up down and stable I've indicated that the Charleston South Carolina real estate market prices have been very stable for the past year despite declining unit sales and high inventory levels. The media has been nothing short of ferocious with negative headlines which serve to frighten buyers and generally will only serve to weaken prices further. But real estate is local, it always has been and always will be local. When real estate prices were soaring into the stratosphere in local markets in Florida or California, prices in many areas of the country were chugging along at a normal or somewhat better rate of appreciation. Some markets were appreciating a little better than average and some were probably even declining during the biggest short term housing boom of our lifetime. Take a look at this map courtesy of Loan Performance HPI, a division of First American Core Logic Inc. The graphics represent the percentage change in home prices in the past 12 months and you can easily see that California prices have declined by over 10% while Florida, Arizona, Nevada, previous housing boom states along with Louisiana (likely still impacted by Katrina) have declined between 5% and 10%. Many areas of the rust belt including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are experiencing difficulties. As to states with increasing prices, the South is well represented as expected with North Carolina and Alabama showing the largest price increases while prices in the balance of the South including South Carolina are at least stable to slightly higher. If you want to drill down into some really interesting statistics on home price increases and declines, click here and then look for this almost at the bottom of the page, instant downloads of excel spreadsheets are free if you provide your name and email address. LoanPerformance HPI Data LibrariesLibraries of current and historical HPI data—with analyses—are available free by clicking a link below and providing your name and email address: Monthly LoanPerformance HPI Notifications Historical LoanPerformance HPI Data Reports What you'll find is 24 months of pricing history for the 30 largest metropolitan areas and all 50 states. When you go back in time, you'll be amazed at the now apparently unsustainable price increases for real estate in various parts of the country. But real estate is still local. Take South Carolina. Charleston real estate is different than Hilton Head or Columbia or Greenville or rural parts of the state. The best analogy I can offer is the stock market. When the Dow or Nasdaq goes up or down, every stock does not perform the same. Here is an example. My favorite online sight for financial news is MarketWatch and they are celebrating their 10th Anniversary. (btw, Congratulations!) MarketWatch has a special report in honor of the anniversary and one item is the list of the 10 best performing stocks in the past 10 years. Chico's FAS, a ladies apparel chain is first with a 10 year gain of 3790% followed by Apple at 3504%. It's noteworthy that Steven Jobs returned to Apple exactly 10 years ago and transformed the once floundering company he originally founded. Those stock gains are pretty impressive so how did Microsoft and Cisco do in the last decade. Well, not too bad, on a stock split adjusted basis, Microsoft shares are up 125.7% from 16.25 to 36.69 and Cisco shares are up 266.5% from 9.04 to 33.13. While 125% and 266% are impressive, they don't match Chico's or Apple's price increases. All stocks and all real estate markets don't move up or down in lock step with each other.