Plotting the April Case/Shiller Housing Numbers

Chalk it up to seasonal factors, but it's good to see some green in the month over month readings of the S&P/Case-Shiller Housing indices. As shown at right, 8 of the 20 cities that Case-Shiller track showed increases in home prices from March to April. Cleveland saw the biggest month over month increase at 2.94%, followed by Dallas (1.12%), Denver (0.83%), and Seattle (0.72%).

There were plenty of declines in April as well, however. Miami fell another 4% in just one month, while Las Vegas, Tampa, Minneapolis, LA, San Fran, San Diego and Phoenix all fell by more than 2%.

And the year over year numbers are still quite depressing. The Composite 10-City index was down 16.3% from April 2007 to April 2008. And Charlotte, which was the last city to hang onto year over year price gains, finally turned negative versus a year ago.

Below we highlight historical charts of the monthly year over year percent change in median home prices for the 20 cities tracked by S&P/Case-Shiller. If you look real closely, you'll see that in April the year over year declines stopped declining by as much as they have been recently.