San Diego metro area's March total down 20.5%

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An important home-price indicator was down a record 14.1 percent in March compared with a year earlier in metro areas around the country and down 20.5 percent in San Diego, Standard & Poor's reported yesterday.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for San Diego has dropped for 30 straight months on a month-by-month basis and 20 straight months year over year. “The steep downturn in residential real estate continues,” said David M. Blitzer, Standard & Poor's index committee chairman, in a statement. “There are very few silver linings that one can see in the data.”

Unlike measures of median prices, Case-Shiller looks at the change in prices, property by property, over time to try to estimate the change in values of similar properties in a particular market.

The San Diego index, set at 100 in January 2000, now stands at 185.44, down from the peak 250.34 in November 2005. That means that at the peak homes were worth 2½ times their 2000 value but have since fallen back 25.9 percent to today's level.