Home Prices Fell 0.8% in October: LPS

Home prices ticked down on average by 0.8 percent in October, reaching $200,000 and marking the fifth straight month for declines for industry figures, according to ""Lender Processing Services"":http://www.lpsvcs.com/Pages/default.aspx (LPS).

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In releasing the national home price index, the analytics provider also said that November may have fielded about 0.5 percent in home prices declines.

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""While Michigan continues to show notable improvements in home prices, with significant price increases each month this year, Georgia is emerging as the region with the greatest difficulty recovering from the home-price meltdown,"" ""Kyle Lundstedt"":http://www.lpsvcs.com/LPSCorporateInformation/ResourceCenter/ThoughtLeadership/Biographies/Pages/KyleLundstedt.aspx, managing director for LPS Applied Analytics, said in a statement.

The new numbers for home prices follow ongoing declines from 2006, at which time U.S. housing inventory amounted to $10.6 trillion ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô and since fell to $7.5 trillion.

LPS said that national home prices fell by 2.7 percent on average in October, with national home prices declining by 4.8 percent to October 2011.

Higher-priced homes scraped by with smaller declines on average, with the top 20 percent of homes dipping by 0.8 percent and high-priced homes falling 0.7 percent, respectively.

Prices fell for 352 of 409 metropolitan areas indexed by the company, with only six areas from three states undergoing price increases ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô namely, Arizona, Florida, and Michigan. Price declines occurred in 24 of 26 large metropolitan areas.