Atlanta: not so hosed, after all? Or only just not yet?

Below we highlight the percentage difference between current median home prices and the max median home prices seen in each of the twenty cities that S&P/Case-Shiller tracks. As shown, there is quite a big difference between the worst areas and the ones that have held up the best. Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami and San Diego have all seen a median home price decline of more than 30% from their peaks. Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco and Tampa are in the second tier of declines between -25% and -30%.

On the flip side, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Seattle and Atlanta are all down less than 10% from their peaks, while New York, Chicago and Boston are just over -10%. While the composite indices are down about 20%, there is a pretty big discrepancy in price declines depending on what area of the country you look at.

Declines From Peaks in Housing Show Big Disparity

A Greensburg man was convicted Tuesday of using a 2-pound concrete garden gnome as a deadly weapon in a February attack against his 16-year-old stepdaughter.

Greensburg man guilty of using gnome as weapon

29.1% of homeowners who purchased in the past five years are currently underwater on their mortgages.

From the archive:

The dot-com crash of the early 2000s should have been followed by decades of soul-searching; instead, even before the old bubble had fully deflated, a new mania began to take hold on the foundation of our long-standing American faith that the wide expansion of home ownership can produce social harmony and national economic well-being. Spurred by the actions of the Federal Reserve, financed by exotic credit derivatives and debt securitization, an already massive real estate sales-and-marketing program expanded to include the desperate issuance of mortgages to the poor and feckless, compounding their troubles and ours.

That the Internet and housing hyperinflations transpired within a period of ten years, each creating trillions of dollars in fake wealth, is, I believe, only the beginning. There will and must be many more such booms, for without them the economy of the United States can no longer function. The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.

Look Around: One in Seven is Underwater

Dirt and its upmarket cousins offer a glimpse of how rising energy prices have caused inflation in the grittier corners of the consumer culture.

Pricier dirt is what consumers want, says Bob LaGasse, executive director of the Manassas-based Mulch and Soil Council, which represents soil and mulch producers nationwide. "People have less time. So their garden projects have changed over time. Convenience, time-saving factors, less mess," he said. They want high-performance dirt, so charged with organic nutrients you could serve it as an appetizer.

From the archive:

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

Inflation Gets Right Down to the Real Nitty-Gritty

The farmers grin as they watch these giant 15-ton machines thunder through the cornfields. In the long run, though, they may be destroying their livelihoods.

Our Good Earth

"Home prices in the U.S. are likely to start to stabilize or touch bottom sometime in the first half of 2009," he said in an interview. Tracing a jagged curve with his finger on a tabletop to underscore the difficulty in pinpointing the precise trough, he cautioned that even at a bottom, "prices could continue to drift lower through 2009 and beyond."

He did offer one suggestion: "The most effective initiative, though politically difficult, would be a major expansion in quotas for skilled immigrants," he said. The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

Greenspan Sees Bottom In Housing

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said falling U.S. home prices are "nowhere near the bottom" and the resulting market turmoil isn't showing signs of abating.

Greenspan Says Housing Prices Not Yet Near Bottom

In terms of strategy, Grantham summarizes his view in what he believes should be investors' motto: "Don't be brave, run away. Live to fight another day."

Specifically, as far as house prices are concerned Grantham looks at the ratio of US median house prices to family income and states: "In order for house prices to reach normal from here, they must either decline 17% immediately or experience four flat years while income catches up, or some combination." Even more worrying, however, is the normal tendency for bubbles to overrun on the downside.

Jeremy Grantham: "I'm officially scared!"

California led the U.S. into the worst housing recession since the 1930s. Now the most populous state may be the first to find the bottom.

In Stockton, the U.S. metro area with the highest foreclosure rate, home sales more than doubled in the second quarter after prices fell by an average 37 percent.

From the archive:

Because all asset hyperinflations revert to the mean, we can expect housing prices to decline roughly 38 percent from their peak as they return to something closer to the historical rate of monetary inflation. If the rate of decline stabilizes at between 6 and 7 percent each year, the correction has about six years to go before things stabilize, leaving the FIRE economy in need of $12 trillion. Where will that money come from?

California's Discount Foreclosure Sales Point to Housing Bottom

This one requires the bullet-point recap:

* On 1/8/2004 the property was purchased for $465,000 with a $372,000 first mortgage, a $46,500 second mortgage and a $46,500 downpayment.
* On 3/11/2004 the owners opened a HELOC for $92,000 and withdrew all their downpayment plus another $45,500.
* On 9/20/2004 they refinanced with a $552,000 first mortgage.
* On 8/16/2005 they opened a HELOC for $38,000.
* On 12/8/2005 they opened a HELOC for $150,000.
* On 6/8/2006 they refinanced with an Option ARM for $650,000 and a second mortgage of $115,000.
* Total property debt of $765,000.
* Total mortgage equity withdrawal of $393,000 over a 2 1/2 year period.

Deer, Wood You Spend The House, Please.