Home prices continue to tumble in April

Home prices continued their freefall in April, with some areas reporting declines of nearly 27% year-over-year. The composite index of 10 metropolitan areas was down 16.3% in April from the same period a year ago, and the 20-city composite index also posted a record drop of 15.3% from 2007. The largest losses in metropolitan areas on the year were in Las Vegas, which fell 26.8% and Miami, which tumbled 26.7%. The only two metro areas reporting growth for the month of April were Charlotte, N.C., where prices grew 0.2%, and Dallas, which saw 1.1% growth in the same period. Despite these upticks, both markets still posted losses over the same period a year ago. The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller family of indices — which tracks the price of single family homes in 20 different metropolitan areas across the country and aggregates the information into two indices — indicated record drops in 18 of the 20 metropolitan areas surveyed.