The Spring Bounce

We have been hearing reports about Vancouver house prices stabilising in recent months. Are we at bottom or is this a bear market rally, the so-called "spring bounce"? The Pope put up an interesting graph of Sacramento house prices, where there were two such spring bounces before a regression to more price drops. It appears there are other markets that have exhibited a temporary bounce up in sales before returning to falling prices. Below is a graph of some notable American markets' prices:


Cities with some semblance of a bounce include: Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and San Francisco. Cities that did not have a spring bounce include: Miami and Phoenix. Note Vancouver's bounce looks sharp because we are using the benchmark where the other cities use the Case-Shiller HPI, which averages 3 months' worth of data.

There is no credible evidence to make me believe we are NOT witnessing a "spring bounce". The fundamentals point to lower prices and, while Vancouver may not see as meteoric a fall as did Miami, I am expecting more price weakness in the second half of 2009.