The (almost) always optimistic Ed Yardeni, or Yardeni Research, on existing-home data released yesterday:

Whew! Home prices didn’t crash in September. That is single-family home prices didn’t crash, though they were down 4.9% y/y. But that’s after increasing 56% since the start of the decade and 100% since 1994 (based on 12-month ma). Condo and co-p prices actually rose 1.4% y/y.

Notwithstanding the widely feared crash scenario, existing home prices are not falling widely and wildly, not yet anyway. They were roughly unchanged in the Northeast (-0.7% y/y) and in the Midwest (+0.6%). On the other hand, it must be feeling a bit more like a crash in the West where the median existing home price dropped 9.0% y/y. In the South, it was down 5.7%. Just how much have prices in these four regions gone down from their record highs? Let’s review, using the 12-month moving averages:

(1) In the West, the median existing home peaked at $349,875 during December 2006. It is down 1.2%, after increasing 86.1% since the start of the decade.

(2) In the South, the median existing home peaked at $186,350 during July 2006. It is down 2.8%, after increasing 52.5% since the start of the decade.

(3) In the Northeast, the median existing home peaked at $285,800 during June 2006. It is down 1.1%, after increasing 80.8% since the start of the decade.
(4) In the Midwest, the median existing home peaked at $168,425 during March 2006. It is down 3.5%, after increasing 39.1% since the start of the decade.

(5) While prices in the Northeast and Midwest are down from recent peaks, both are actually showing signs of bottoming. Prices are up 1.0% in the Northeast since February, and up 0.4% since July in the Midwest.