You would have to go all the way back to the middle of 2003 — almost nine years ago — to find U.S. home prices as low as they have been recently.
Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller composite index tracks home prices in 20 metropolitan areas around the country.
It recently discovered that prices for single-family homes fell yet again in late 2011. Prices near the end of last year were down almost 4 percent from late 2010 — when home prices were already very low because of the housing market collapse.
The biggest drop nationwide was in Atlanta — which had an astonishing home price decline of 12 percent from one year before. In fact, the price of an entry-level home in the Atlanta area dropped by almost one-third last year!
The glut of existing homes may be a boon to buyers, but it suppresses the economically important construction of new homes, which generates lots of jobs and tax revenue.