Real estate prices climb

WASHINGTON — The summer's trend of rising home prices faded at the end of the traditional home shopping season, two reports Tuesday showed.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 major cities rose only 0.3 percent to 144.96 in September, but it was the fourth straight monthly increase. The seasonally adjusted index is now up more than 3 percent from its bottom in May, but still 30 percent below its peak in April 2006.

Another reading of home prices by the Federal Housing Finance Agency held steady from August to September.

Analysts expect prices to dip again this winter as foreclosures increase and economic growth remains modest. The government said Tuesday that the economy grew at a 2.8 percent rate last quarter — less than originally estimated. And forecasts for the next several months are no better. Unemployment, meanwhile, could rise from the current 10.2 percent to as high as 11 percent next year.

"As long as the unemployment rate stays elevated, you're going to see pressure on the pace of foreclosures, which are going to find their way back onto the market, depressing prices," said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist with Miller Tabak & Co.

Home prices are a key ingredient to rebuilding the economy. Homeowners feel wealthier when their property appreciates in value and are more likely to spend money. Rising prices also help millions of homeowners who owe more to the bank than their homes are worth.

Currently, roughly one in four homeowners are in that situation, according to First American CoreLogic, a real estate information company. And a record 14 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are either behind on their payments or in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Association said last week.

"We are very worried about the potential for a huge wave of supply next year, both from private sellers and banks," wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. "Prices could easily reverse their recent gains."

Spring and summer are typically the best times of the year for the housing market, because families prefer to move between school years. And this year's sales were aided by a tax credit for first-time buyers, which drove up sales nearly 30 percent between May and October.

In the winter months, fewer homeowners put their properties on the market. That means a bigger proportion of the sales will be foreclosures.

Last winter, sales of foreclosures and other distressed properties made up about half of all sales in February and March, compared with about a third over the summer, according to the National Association of Realtors.