House Prices: Will the March Case-Shiller indexes be at new post bubble lows?

Just a quick note: The publicly available S&P Case-Shiller release on Tuesday will include the two composite indexes (10 and 20 cities) for March, the National Index for Q1, and the indexes for 20 cities.

In nominal terms, the two Case-Shiller composite indexes for February were still above the previous post bubble lows set in April 2009. The Case-Shiller national index (released quarterly), hit a new post bubble low in Q4 2010.

I expect both the National Index and the Composite 20 index to be at new post bubble nominal lows in March. Radar Logic provides a forecast each month that has been pretty close. Here is their estimate for the March Case-Shiller indexes (Not Seasonally Adjusted, NSA):

Last month, we predicted that the S&P/Case-Shiller 10-City composite for February 2010 would be about 153 and the 20-City composite would be roughly 139. In fact, the 10-City composite was 152.70 and the 20-City composite was 139.27.

This month, we expect the March 2011 10-City composite index to be about 152 and the 20-City index to be roughly 138.

That would put the composite 20 at a new low (both NSA and SA), but the Composite 10 would still be about 1% above the low in April 2009.