Home Price Declines Accelerate in Second Quarter (Kathleen M. Howley and Brian Louis)

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Home price declines in the U.S. accelerated in the second quarter, dropping by a record 15.6 percent from a year earlier, as foreclosure sales weighed on values.

The median price of an existing single-family home dropped to $174,100, the National Association of Realtors said today. Total sales rose 3.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.76 million from the first quarter and dropped 2.9 percent from the second quarter of 2008.

Prices fell in 129 out of 155 metropolitan areas from a year ago and 39 states experienced sales increases from the first quarter, the Chicago-based realtors group said. Sales in the U.S. housing market at the heart of the global recession are beginning to stabilize, said Patrick Newport, an economist for Lexington, Massachusetts-based IHS Global Insight.

“Sales of new and existing homes are beginning to grow again,” Newport said in an interview. “The market may be past its bottom.”