More Pain, Less Gain: S&P/Case-Shiller Preview for April 2011

As I demonstrated in prior posts, given their strong correlation, the home price indices provided daily by Radar Logic, averaged monthly, can effectively be used as a preview of the monthly S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices.

The current Radar Logic 25 MSA Composite data reported on residential real estate transactions (condos, multi and single family homes) that settled as late as April 22 and averaged for the month indicates that with increasing spring transactions has come increasing prices (the typical trend) with the national index increasing 1% since March but still remaining 5.45% below the level seen in April 2010.

The Radar Logic index will likely be capturing an uptrend in prices from now until mid-summer when transactions generally start to turn down again.

Look for tomorrow's S&P/Case-Shiller home price report to reflect this trend though to a lesser degree due to its three month rolling-average nature with prices flat to moderately higher.

Bull Trip!: GDP Report Q1 2011 (Third Rough Estimate)

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their second "estimate" of the Q1 2011 GDP report showing that the economy continued to expand with real GDP increasing at an annualized rate of 1.9% from Q4 2010.

On a year-over-year basis real GDP increased 2.33% while the quarter-to-quarter non-annualized percent change was 0.48%.

The latest report reveals an notable decline in non-residential fixed investment with non-residential structures declining at a rate of 14.8% from the fourth quarter 2010 while residential fixed investment also declined falling at a rate of 2.0% over the same period.

Note that the BEA has yet to take down their estimates for Q2 residential fixed investment which still sits at the lofty level of a supposed 25.7% quarter-to-quarter change... not likely.... look for that figure to be revised down in coming releases impacting the anemic "final" Q2 2010 results.

Government spending declined notably with the national defense component declining at a rate of 11.8%.

Commercial Cataclysm!: Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index April 2011

The latest release of the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Index showed a notable monthly decline of 3.7% between March and April suggesting that the nation’s commercial property markets are continuing to slump through a tremendous downturn that has seen prices down some 48.95% since the peak set in October 2007.

It's important to note that the index has fallen to an all time series low clearly indicating that the nation's CRE markets have now followed the residential markets into double-dip territory.

The Moody’s/REAL CPPI data series is produced by the MIT/CRE but is noted to be “complimentary” to their alternative transaction based index (TBI) as it is published monthly and is formulated from a completely different dataset supplied by Real Capital Analytics, Inc and Real Estate Analytics LLC.