sakina, as I keep explaining to people, the median is a 2 year lagging indicator. Jim’s explanation of falling prices is applicable to specific homes, not to the entire market, becasue the higher end home sales skew the median up. Don’t confuse what a particular home will sell for, with the median. The 10% drop figure is not in the data, but you will get this by talking with realtors, who are telling you what clients can get for their home. You can contact some realtors if you don’t believe me, and get your own examples. Ask for sales prices of homes which sold today, and compare what the person paid for that house in 2004. ocrenter has some on his site too. There’s another guy who tracks downtown condos. I personally got 5% less for my house last December, before the big downturn started. So it’s not hard for me to believe another 5% drop has been added. But those of you just reading median data stuff, can be easily misled. So it is important to *not* rely on the median.
I don’t know how accurate Case-Shiller index is. If it goes against what is happening in the field, it wouldn’t be useful either. I can’t comment on that, because I haven’t researched it, but Rich feels it’s better than the median. But probably it’s not perfect either.
