The article below discusses prices in apartments in recent months and compares them
to prices for single family home prices in the same time frame.
While Single Family Prices Make Biggest Drop in S&P Index’s History, Apartment
Prices Show Signs of Flattening
Published: October 28, 2008
By Anuradha Kher, Online News Editor, Multi-Housing News
New York–Even though the apartment sector had the highest returns over the past 12
months among all commercial real estate types at +0.4 percent, prices remained
flat, according to Standard & Poor’s July results for the S&P/GRA Commercial Real
Estate Indices. Nationally, commercial real estate prices for July 2008 too were
level versus July 2007.
The National composite reported an annual price change that was flat, compared to
July of 2007. This is down from the +1.5 percent reported in June’s data. It is
also well below this cycle’s peak of +14.7 percent, reported in August of 2006, and
is the lowest growth rate in the near 15-year history of the index.
The index for apartments in July 2008 was 142.52 down -0.9 percent in the June-July
period, down 1 percent in the May-June period and with a 0.4 percent year-on-year
change.
Meanwhile, single-family home prices in 20 cities fell 16.6 percent in August
compared with a year ago—the biggest annual drop in the history of the Case-Shiller
Home Price Index.
“The downturn in residential real estate prices continued, with very few bright
spots in the data,” says David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at
Standard & Poor’s.
Based on the latest report on condo prices for the second quarter of 2008 released
by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), metro area condominium and
cooperative prices – covering changes in 54 metro areas – showed the national
median existing-condo price was $220,000 in the second quarter, down three percent
from $226,900 in the second quarter of 2007. Seventeen metros showed annual
increases in the median condo price and 37 areas had price declines.
The strongest condo price increases were in the Syracuse, N.Y., area, where the
second quarter price of $144,900 rose 17.8 percent from a year earlier, followed by
the New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner area of Louisiana, at $192,100, up 15.9 percent,
and the Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land area of Texas, where the median condo price of
$141,100 rose 9.9 percent from the second quarter of 2007. Areas where condo prices
declined mirrored the pattern seen with single-family homes.
Metro area median existing-condo prices in the second quarter ranged from $107,500
in the Wichita, Kan., area to $523,500 in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area.
The second most expensive condo market reported was Honolulu at $330,000, followed
by Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana at $327,800.
Other affordable condo markets include Greensboro-High Point, N.C., at $109,600 in
the second quarter, and the Indianapolis area at $113,500.
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