United States Nationwide Median Home Price Sinks to $165,400 in February
U.S.HousingUpdate.com
02.26.2009

By Jeremiah Allen
The U.S. nationwide median home price continued it's steady decline falling to $165,400 in February, a 16% drop from February 2008.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the nationwide median home price now sits at levels not seen since 2002.

The NAR and other housing cheerleaders are pointing to the up-tic in home sales as a sign of recovery as the sales of existing homes grew 5.1 percent to an annual rate of 4.72 million last month, from 4.49 million units in January.  However, the housing bears point to the ever-increasing foreclosure crisis as obvious proof that the pace of free-falling home prices is nowhere near slowing.

The following chart shows the number of adjustable rate mortgages scheduled to adjust up off of the low introductory teaser-rate.  As you can see, with the number of adjustable rate mortgage's continuously increasing as American job-losses continue to mount, the foreclosure storm is still in it's early stages.

Expect a continued correction in nationwide median home prices for at least 2 - 3 more years, maybe longer.  Of course there will be local markets and some zip-codes that will buck this trend but the overall national median will continue to be driven lower by mega ARM resets / foreclosures in most major US cities.
(above chart courtesy of BusinessWeek.com)
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