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Denver real estate market not as bad as other cities’

John RebchookRocky Mountain News

DENVER The Denver-area housing market was the best-performing of the 20 largest markets at the end of last year, losing only 4 percent in the fourth quarter from the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released Tuesday. The 20 major markets tracked showed a record 18.5 percent decline, while the 10-city composite in the index showed a 19.2 percent decline, also a record.Denver, Dallas, Cleveland and Boston fared the best in terms of annual declines down 4 percent, 4.3 percent, 6.1 percent and 7 percent, respectively, according to the report.But nationwide, prices of existing single-family homes continue to set record declines, continuing the trend throughout all of 2007 and 2008, the report shows.The broad downturn in the residential real estate market continues, said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poors. There are very few, if any, pockets of turnaround that one can see in the data. Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path, with all of the 20 metro areas reporting annual declines, and eight of those MSAs (metropolitan statistical areas) now with negative returns exceeding 20 percent. If one looks in detail at the annual return data, it can be seen that 13 of the 20 MSAs and two composites have been reporting consecutive declines since December 2007. The monthly data follows a similar trend, with all of the metro areas reporting at least four consecutive months of negative returns.From November to December of last year, the Denver-area housing market lost 1.5 percent. Only Boston did better, losing 1.3 percent.


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