Imagine a headline in June 1991 (if Case-Shiller was around): “House Prices increase at 11.6% annualized rate in June!” The horrible price declines were over … right? Nope. Real house prices declined for almost another 5 years. Just something to remember. From Bloomberg: NYC Apartment Rents Fall as Tenants Gain Leverage In buildings attended by doormen, rents on one-bedroom apartments dropped 10 percent from a year earlier to an average of $3,274 a month, according to a report by the Real Estate Group of New York. Studio prices fell 7 percent at those properties to $2,329 and two-bedrooms declined almost 6.9 percent to $5,161. Falling rents means a further decline in house prices to lower the price-to-rent ratio . And a market graph from Doug Short . This matches up the market bottoms for four crashes (with an interim bottom for the Great Depression).

Read more here – Misc: A possible 1991 House Price Headline, and Falling Rents in NYC