Business News
US home prices starting to rise
Jul 28, 2009, 15:19 GMT
Washington - Home prices in some US regions are beginning to rise, according to a private report Tuesday that offered more signs that a housing downturn which fuelled a deep recession may be easing.
The country's 20 largest cities showed their first month-on-month gains in May since the summer of 2006, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller Index. The rate of price declines has slowed for the fourth month, after 16 straight months of record drops in the index.
Prices still dropped 17.1 per cent in May compared to the same month a year earlier. But they were up 0.5 per cent from April.
'These are the first time we have seen broad increases in home prices in 34 months,' said David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. 'This could be an indication that home price declines are finally stabilizing.'
The price drops since 2006 have caused millions of homeowners to default on their mortgages and cost lenders hundreds of billions of dollars. The housing turmoil served as the spark for a wider financial and economic crisis that is the worst in decades.
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