LPS Home Price Index Shows U.S. Home Prices Declined 0.8 Percent to Late 2002 Levels in October; Early Data Suggest 0.5 Percent Drop in November Likely

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jan. 11, 2012– Lender Processing Services, Inc. (NYSE: LPS), a leading provider of technology, data and analytics for the mortgage and real estate industries, today announced that its LPS Applied Analytics division updated its home price index (LPS HPI) with residential sales concluded during October 2011. The LPS HPI summarizes home price trends nationwide by tracking sales each month in more than 13,500 ZIP codes. Within each ZIP code, the LPS HPI tracks five price levels from low to high.

“While Michigan continues to show notable improvements in home prices, with significant price increases each month this year, Georgia is emerging as the region with the greatest difficulty recovering from the home-price meltdown,” observed Kyle Lundstedt, managing director for LPS Applied Analytics.

The LPS HPI national average home price for transactions during October 2011 was $200,000 – a decline of 0.8 percent during the month relative to September, reaching a price level not seen since October of 2002 (Figure 1, Table 1). This is the fifth consecutive month of decreases in prices. The partial data available for November suggests more moderation of price declines to approximately 0.5 percent. LPS reported partial data from October transactions in its December report, which proved a reasonable indicator for October’s performance: it showed a preliminary 1.1 percent estimated decline, compared to the 0.8 percent for the full month’s data.

LPS HPI average national home prices continue the downward trend begun after the market peak in June 2006, when the total value of U.S. housing inventory covered by the LPS HPI stood at $10.6 trillion. Since that peak, the value has declined 30.1 percent to $7.5 trillion. During the period of most rapid price declines, from June 2007 through December 2008, the LPS HPI national average home price dropped $56,000 from $282,000, which corresponds to an average annual decline of 13.8 percent. Since December 2008, prices have fallen more slowly, interrupted by brief seasonal intervals of rising prices. During this period of more slowly declining prices, the national average price has fallen approximately $26,000 from $226,000.

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