Atlanta made a short list of four cities where home values are now below year 2000 values. The others on the list are Detroit, Cleveland and Las Vegas. Atlanta values are 1.6% below the year 2000 index value and down 27.9% since the housing peak. Nationwide housing prices fell 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011 after declining 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2010. This is not good news for the economy as typically housing and consumer spending lead economic recoveries.

I received my DeKalb County assessment notice over the Memorial Day weekend. The county's market value estimate on my house has been 4.6% higher than the 2003 sale price for the past several years. My new value is now 1.9% lower than last year but is 2.6% higher than the 2003 sale. This is interesting given that the Case-Shiller home price index is indicating that values in the Atlanta Metro area are now below year 2000 levels.

Commercial mortgage-backed securities continued on the path of rising delinquency rates. Real point LLC indicates a delinquency rates of 8.37% while Trepp LLC shows a delinquency rate of 9.65%. Hotels have the highest delinquency rate at 13.2%. Trepp said that the increase in delinquency came even while there were factors putting downward pressure on the delinquency rate. New CMBS are being added to the pool after they have seasoned for six months. This adds less distressed securities to the pool which should lower the delinquency rate, however this is not happening.

Yesterday it was reported that sales of existing US homes declined as did consumer confidence. The overall economy is in a slowdown since the big gross domestic product gains of the fourth quarter. Manufacturing has showed signs of a slowdown and the index of leading economic indicators has also recently dipped. Even Walmart, the place to find falling prices, reported a decrease in earnings the first quarter.

Mortgages more than 30 days late or in the foreclosure process totaled 6.4 million units in April. Of the 6.4 million units approximately 4.2 million are not currently in foreclosure. This is the shadow inventory which is keeping a lid on housing prices. In addition there are nearly 2,000,000 housing units which are not delinquent that are more than 50% upside down and are likely to add to the shadow inventory in the future.

Hapeville got a shot in the arm this week when it was announced that Porsche would be building its new American headquarters at the old Ford assembly plant site in Hapeville Georgia. The new headquarters will include a 150,000 square foot office building and a 1.6 mile test track. The test track will be there to allow potential Porsche owners to test drive their vehicles on site. Yes if you would like to enjoy the lifestyle of the rich and famous you can fly into Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport, take a taxi to the Porsche headquarters, and test drive a Porsche 911.