U.S. Home-Price Gains Slow as Housing Slump Deepens

Bloomberg reports:

U.S. home-price growth slowed during the second quarter from a year earlier in the sharpest three- month plunge on record, according to a government report issued today that indicates this year's housing slump is deepening.

``The wheels are coming off the housing market,'' said Scott Anderson, an economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis.

Prices for single-family homes rose an average of 1.17 percent during the period, compared with 3.65 percent growth in the second quarter of 2005, according to a report issued today by Office of Federal Housing Enterprise in Washington. The drop was the biggest since the agency began keeping records in 1975. The report doesn't give an average price, only the percent of change.

The quarterly slowdown came during the ``spring selling season,'' when about half of a year's home sales typically occur, suggesting the housing market may be slowing more rapidly than economists including Anderson initially predicted. In 2005, the last of five record years for home sales and price gains, the second quarter was the strongest, according to Ofheo data.

``The housing market is cooling in a very significant way,'' Ofheo Director James Lockhart said in today's report.

You'll want to read this whole article.Prices maybe a lot lower than people think.