May House Prices Rise From April

Washington, DC, July 22, 2009--House prices fell 5.6 percent in May from a year ago as job losses and record foreclosures kept buyers out of the market during the spring selling season.

The average price rose 0.9 percent from April, the Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington said today. Prices were forecast to drop 0.2 percent, according to the median estimate of 16 economists in a Bloomberg survey.

The three-year housing slump cut U.S. home prices 33 percent since the July 2006 peak, according to S&P/Case-Shiller index. The highest unemployment since 1983 and the biggest foreclosure rate on record are thwarting government efforts to revive real estate demand.

“The distress in the housing market was not caused by unemployment, but now we are seeing a wave of delinquencies and foreclosures by people who, if they had kept their jobs, would be unlikely to default,” said Thomas Lawler, a former Fannie Mae economist who’s an independent consultant in Leesburg, Virginia.