I should probably just scratch “sell my house” off my 2011 list of resolutions. The latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index was released a few days after Christmas, and the data is disheartening.

 

The latest index, which compares prices in September and October 2010, shows a “deceleration” after prices steadily edged up  in 2010 following a nationwide low in late 2009.

 

Atlanta, it seems, has lower still to go. Prices in metro Atlanta were down almost 3 percent between September and October 2010, and down a full 6.2 percent from a year ago, lower than they were in the national slump.

 

According to the Indices, which go back more than two decades, Atlanta home prices are now around their 2000 levels, erasing the appreciation in the early years of the decade (grim news for people like me who bought homes during the appreciation surge of late 2002). By contrast, house prices in New York, Washington D.C., and L.A. are 70 percent higher than they were in 2000.

 

Here are the top five losers in home prices and the percentage that each market lost between September and October 2010.

 

1.  Atlanta (-2.90%)

2.  Detroit (-2.45%)

3.  Chicago (-1.99%)

4.  Minneapolis (-1.91%)

5.  San Francisco (-1.91%)

 

>> Click here to download a summary of the index