U.S. housing prices continue slide

What happens when there’s a glut of houses for sale? Beyond the agita unsold homes might cause their owners, one of the obvious results is that prices fall—something sure to spark joy among potential buyers out there.

There’s an 11.2-month supply of homes for sale in this country, according to the National Association of Realtors. And, based on the latest S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices, which tracks fluctuations in the value of residential real estate in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas, home prices are dropping nationwide. The S&P/Case-Shiller index for April 2008, released today, shows a more than 15 percent decline from a year earlier.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Mark Zandi, chief economist and cofounder of Moody’s Economy.com, said that by next June prices will have dropped about 25 percent from their peak in 2006. (The median price of an existing single-family home in 2007 fell to $217,900, down from $228,200 a year earlier, according to The State of the Nation's Housing 2008 report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.)

“I think it is going to take another year nationwide for us to work through all of our problems in the housing market, at least to make a significant dent,” Zandi said in an article in The San Diego Union-Tribune. “In some parts of the country, the market will remain depressed well into the next decade. It is going to be a slog.”

Essential information: If you’re planning to move, learn how to sell your home in a buyer’s market.