October 30, 2007 (LPAC)--The national drop in American home prices--popping a $20 trillion 2000-2007 housing bubble, and constituting the main driving force behind the mass foreclosure wave--is accelerating, reports out today show.

The Case-Shiller Home Price Index for August, released by Standard and Poor's, shows that average home prices had fallen 5% from August 2006 to August 2007, in the 10 major metropolitan areas which that Index has been surveying for 20 years. The drop from June to July was 0.5%, and from July to August, 0.8%, indicating a faster rate of fall, in the range of 7-9% per year. "The fall in home prices is showing no real signs of a slowdown or turnaround," said Robert Shiller, co-manager of the index.

This index compares resales of the same home within a two-year period. Its worst previous drop was 6.3%, from April 1990 to April 1991.

The broader, 20-metro-area Case Shiller index was down 4.4% this year to August, with an 0.7% drop from July to August.

Goldman Sachs Analytics forecasts that average home prices will be down an unprecedented 7% from December 2006 to December 2007. But this is not making homes any more "affordable," to households, it says, because of effective rises in mortgage interest rates.

Tampa average prices were down 10.1% in a year; Detroit, 9.3% in a year. Those two and Miami, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Washington D.C., are recording their worst price drops in the 20-year history of this index--and undoubtedly, since the Depression. The CEO of one of the country's biggest homebuilders, Jeffrey Mezger of KB Home, based in Los Angeles, forecasts that housing prices in California could fall a further 10-15% in the next 18 months.

This price collapse makes any policy of "refinancing" mortgages to stop foreclosures, completely unworkable.