The latest housing report was released today by the OFHEO – Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight – covering 3Q for 2006. From the report:

OFHEO House Price Index Shows Declines in Five States, Continued Deceleration in Others.

With U.S. house prices growing less than one percent during the third quarter, it provides more evidence that the long-forecasted national deceleration in house prices is occurring. Given the five-year appreciation prior to this quarter of 56.8 percent, the slowdown is not unexpected. There are still some areas where appreciation rates remain very high but now they are the exception rather than the norm.

Five states — New York, Rhode Island, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts — saw price declines from the second to the third quarter of the year.

You can look at individual metropolitan areas here. The good news, for those of us in Durham, is that Durham is still going strong with a reasonable growth rate. The last 4 quarters of growth were at (annualized rates) 6.31%, 5.38%, 6.06%, and 5.73%. There’s no slowdown here, which is not surprising considering that we never saw 10%+ growth in the area.

Here’s a quick chart of the rate of change in house prices in Durham since 2002:

Durham MSA Rate of Housing Price Index Changes

Take a look at the San Diego area, and you’ll see that in 3Q 2004, they had 31% annualized growth in prices. It’s now (3Q 2006) at 3%. That’s a slowdown.