US home prices tumble in April at record rate

No matter who's measuring, the results are the same: Housing prices are tumbling at the sharpest rates ever with a bottom still at least a year away, economists say. Both the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price indices and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight index on Tuesday reported record year-over-year declines in April, a sobering signal that the housing slump not only is deepening, but also engulfing markets once above water. The last holdout in the Case-Shiller index, Charlotte, N.C., finally succumbed to the national housing downturn, with prices slipping 0.1 percent from a year ago. No city in the Case-Shiller 20-city index appreciated in April, the first time that's happened since its inception in 2000. Las Vegas and Miami again posted the largest declines, each losing nearly 27 percent. Much of the pricing pressure comes from foreclosures and so-called short sales, in which a lender accepts an offer less than the value of the mortgage. These distressed sales can be discounted by 20 percent to 50 percent, forcing home sellers to slash their listing prices to compete.

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