Altos Research and Real IQ released their Real-Time Housing Market Update report which provides a monthly snapshot of the 10-City Composite Index. It is along the same lines (no pun intended) as the S&P/Case Shiller index to which they state their index is closely correlated to. The report summarizes metrics associated with active residential property listings to present the only real-time view of the housing market.

Michael Simonsen, the CEO & Co-Founder Altos Research has been a guest on my podcast and I hold both he and his firm in high regard.

In November, both listing prices and listing inventory generally declined.

Some of the key findings:

* The Altos Research 10-City Composite Price was down by 0.4% in November and 0.8% during the most recent three-month period.
* The Composite effectively bottomed out in January at $470,017 and climbed throughout the first half of the year to $509,030 in July before returning to a gradual downward trend. Prices are likely to continue showing modest declines throughout the seasonally weak fall and winter months of 2009.
* Asking prices increased in just one of 26 markets – Miami. The previously strong California markets all showed price declines during November.

The report suggests weak price trends over the winter, similar to the warnings shared by Case-Shiller and NAR.

Note: This was my first blog post done at 34,000 feet.