Lender Processing Services, a leading provider of technology, data and analytics for the mortgage and real estate industries, announced this week that according to its research the national average home price for transactions during October 2011 was $200,000 – a decline of 0.8 percent during the month relative to September, reaching a price level not seen since October of 2002. “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,” observed Kyle Lundstedt, managing director for LPS Applied Analytics. This is the fifth consecutive month of decreases in prices. Higher-priced homes had somewhat smaller declines: 0.8 percent for the top 20 percent of homes (prices above $314,000), compared to 0.9 percent for the bottom 20 percent (below $101,000). The highest-priced homes, representing the top 1 percent (prices above $844,000), declined 0.7 percent.
