Lawler: Are “National” Home Prices Already Falling?

However, some recent home price reports actually suggest that “national” home prices may already have started to decline, and they certainly show that home prices in some areas of the country have already begun to fall.
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Given the lagged nature of some of these HPIs – and considering that closed transactions typically represent contract activity in the previous one or two months – it seems quite possible that home prices contemporaneously measured may in fact have already reached a peak for the year. Indeed, my own view is that a “base case” projection would be that all of these HPIs will show a December level that is below the June level.