Property Management Nation

The real estate market has yet to hit rock bottom as was predicted at the end of 2009, but rather continues to slide in many markets.  While this slide isn’t nearly as devastating as the drop in 2008, prices are still dropping 1.4% nationwide.  According to Forbes and Altos Research, these five cities have had the fastest drop in medium single-family homes in the past three months:

1. San Diego, California
2. Salt Lake City, Utah
3. Charlotte, North Carolina
4. Denver, Colorado
5. Portland Oregon

Altos Research looked at 27 of the most closely monitored real estate markets in the United States and considered the inventory, days on the market and asking price of single-family homes in their January market update.  San Diego fell the fastest with a drop of 7.3% between the months of October and December 2009 due to a highly unstable market.  Prices started to rise at the start of 2009 but once fall hit dived quickly.  As for the third worst city, Charlotte, the drop was mostly due to the crash of Wall Street.  Charlotte is the home to major financial corporations such as Bank of America Corp.

The only city to actually see a rise in home prices was Miami, Florida.  Home prices there rose to a median of $495,000 which is up 2%.  While this can be looked at as a good thing, it should actually be taken with a grain of salt.  This area was one of the hardest hit markets in the original real estate crash and is therefore regaining momentum slowly.  Homes in Miami stay on the market the longest of any market with an average of eight months.  Also the Altos research does not include condominiums which is a large part of the Miami market.

While this news is depressing for the housing market and especially those that were optimistic about an upswing in 2010, keep in mind that these falling numbers are just a gentle slide compared to the crash we experienced a few years ago.