January home price data
National home prices, including distressed sales, declined on a year-over-year basis by 3.1 percent in January 2012 and by 1.0 percent compared to December 2011, the sixth consecutive monthly decline, according to the CoreLogic January Home Price Index (HPI) report.
When you take out distressed sales, prices only dropped 0.9 percent in January 2012 compared to January 2011, and without distressed sales, the monthly home price index actually increased 0.7 percent in January.
“Although home price declines are slowly improving and not far from the bottom, home prices are down to nearly the same levels as 10 years ago,” said Dr. Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.
Regional performance varied
According to CoreLogic, the five states with the highest appreciation (including distressed sales) were South Dakota (+5.7 percent), North Dakota (+4.0 percent), West Virginia (+4.0 percent), Montana (+3.6 percent) and Michigan (+3.0 percent).
Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the highest appreciation were South Dakota (+6.4 percent), Montana (+5.9 percent), North Dakota (+3.8 percent), Alaska (+3.7 percent) and Indiana (+2.7 percent).
Including distressed sales, the five states with the greatest depreciation were Illinois (-8.7 percent), Nevada (-8.0 percent), Delaware (-7.9 percent), Alabama (-7.7 percent) and Georgia (-7.5 percent).
Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the greatest depreciation were: Nevada (-6.7 percent), Delaware (-5.5 percent), Minnesota (-4.1 percent), New Jersey (-3.5 percent) and Georgia (-3.3 percent).
Of the top 100 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) measured by population, 71 are showing year-over-year declines in January, eight fewer than in December.
Tara Steele is the News Director at The American Genius, covering entrepreneur, real estate, technology news and everything in between. If you'd like to reach Tara with a question, comment, press release or hot news tip, simply click the link below.

Vance Shutes
March 7, 2012 at 8:01 pm
Tara,
It’s a different story in Southeast Michigan, causing me to write the following:
To my Appraiser friends:
How will we EVER get out of this housing funk when all you can do is look in the rear-view mirror while driving? Seriously, buyers, sellers and agents today are all driving while looking FORWARD through the windshield of life. Are you Appraisers completely unaware of all of the multiple-offer, more-than-full-price selling price occurrences in our local market? Do you take no account of the fact that buyers are seeing value in today’s home prices? Why must you look ONLY in the rear-view mirror? No wonder you crash and burn so many deals these days!
As surely as Appraisers were blamed for the market run-up and crash in the mid-2000s, so will you be blamed for the lack of appreciating values in today’s market! If you keep it up, eventually, the only buyers able to buy will be those with cash – and then we won’t need appraisers any more.
Paula Henry
March 8, 2012 at 4:55 am
Vance – I have to agree with you. We are also seeing buyers ready to move on today’s prices, indicated by multiple offers and homes pended within days. I think appraisers are definitely looking backwards in many instances, therefore stalling growth.