Last week Freddie Mac as part of the release of its financials published data on housing prices in the first quarter of this year. The data show a decline in housing prices in Pennsylvania of 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2008, the first such decline since 1995. The fall in prices in Pennsylvania was smaller than the declines measured in 37 states, including five of Pennsylvania’s nearest neighbors.

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Freddie Mac's Conventional Mortgage Home Price Index for Philadelphia will not be released until June 3rd. This Thursday the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) will publish its own housing price data for the first quarter. As a preview here is data on the change in housing prices in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia over the past couple of years in Freddie Mac's index and the OFHEO's index. Note the figures in the table below have not been adjusted for inflation. The last row is contains the most recent data we have.

Unfavorable credit conditions, rising unemployment (up by nearly 16,000 since March of last year), and perhaps a bit of a buyers market raise the likelihood that prices in the Philadelphia Metropolitan area may be headed for their first decline since 1997 in both the housing price indexes.

Stay tuned!

Note. Data on housing prices in Philadelphia is for the entire Philadelphia Metropolitan Area including Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia County.

And one last picture for the geeks, percent change in housing prices in both indexes for Metropolitan Philadelphia from 1977 to 2007.

(see a larger figure)

--Mark Price