The three existing home price series show very different price trends

 |  from Notes from Jim Haughey

How much home prices fall is critically important in estimating when the housing market will hit bottom and begin to recover. Depending on which existing home price series you look at, prices have been falling for either six months or for more than a year and the price drop is either a few percentage points or a double-digit plunge. Reed Construction Data believes that the OFHEO purchase only, existing home price series is the best measure of national price trends and that the Case/Shiller/Weiss existing home price series is the best measure of price trends in the large and deeply distressed housing markets in the southeast and southwest.